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Date: July 29, 2024 at 17:45:07
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: rump style "win" in venezuela... |
URL: https://thehill.com/latino/4798887-maduro-election-venezuela/ |
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his buds Cuba, Russia and Iran only main countries that recognize his"win"...
US, allies demand Maduro show his election receipts in Venezuela
by Rafael Bernal and Laura Kelly - 07/29/24 5:55 PM ET
The U.S. and other democracies in the hemisphere are facing a high-stakes test on how they’ll respond to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s claim of reelection victory amid widespread accusations of fraud.
The Biden administration is so far keeping its powder dry but has expressed serious concerns that the published results do not accurately reflect the will of the Venezuelan people.
“It’s absolutely critical that every vote is counted fairly and transparently, that election officials immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers without delay, and that the electoral authorities publish a full detailed tabulation of votes,” said John Kirby, the White House National Security Council communications adviser.
“We’re going to hold judgment until that time; we in the international community are watching, and we will respond accordingly.”
The wait-and-see approach is in part a product of Maduro’s stranglehold on power in the South American country, with a tight-knit regime showing few, if any, cracks in its power structures.
But it’s also a recognition that not many palatable options exist to tighten the screws on Maduro from abroad.
The Biden administration had worked ahead of the election to verify safeguards against fraud at the polls, touting progress in getting Maduro to agree even to permit opposition candidates and allow election observers in the country. The data collected and the testimonies from the opposition are viewed as key in building the case for any actions that may be imposed against Maduro if his loss is proven.
“You’ve seen leaders and foreign ministers from around the world make statements of concern that this process needs to be more transparent and unwillingness to accept that Maduro would simply be ratified in his position without at a minimum much greater transparency,” a senior administration official told reporters Monday.
“That means that there is an international consensus moving forward that would have collapsed if it were not for the actions that we have taken. And it is clear at a minimum to the Maduro side, I would argue, that a large portion of the population is seeking change. And the numbers that they have released at a minimum don’t reflect the intensity of that desire for change. So I would argue that we’re at a much better position now than we were three years ago.”
The Venezuelan national electoral council (CNE) declared Maduro the winner, but it has yet to publish official election results, which were automatically generated in each polling station.
International observers and the opposition have expressed confidence in the Venezuelan polling system itself: Digital polling machines tally votes and produce a paper version of each vote and a final paper record of the day’s vote totals at each polling station.
Neither the CNE nor Maduro have produced the receipts, but opposition observers claim to have the records from at least 40 percent of stations.
Those records show opposition candidate Edmundo González with about a 70-30 lead over Maduro.
“It’s simply not mathematically possible that Maduro can prevail in an election with González having won 7 in 10 votes in the 40 percent of voting tabulations to which the opposition had access,” said Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
Biden administration officials highlighted the need for Maduro to show his math before crowning a winner, and the European Union took a similar position.
Though Maduro’s win was quickly recognized by Venezuelan allies including Cuba, Russia and Iran, regional leaders with some affinity for Maduro stopped short of joining that parade in an embarrassment for the Venezuelan regime.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement that publication of the paper trail is “an indispensable step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election result.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro didn’t immediately issue a statement, but the Colombian Foreign Ministry issued one saying it was “awaiting the disclosure of the election results by the National Electoral Council of Venezuela” and added, “The counting of votes must be done with full guarantees for all sectors.”
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo issued a statement with more urgency. “We call for the total vote count, verification and independent audit to proceed as soon as possible,” he wrote in a post on social platform X.
Though the international community has stopped short of calling Maduro’s actions fraudulent, the Venezuelan opposition is content with the global response so far.
“We understand the international community, we understand the subtle approach and the idea of going step by step and building consensus. For us, it’s really important to keep everyone in the page that we are seeing until now, having governments like the Brazilian government, like the Colombian government, like the Chilean government, having the Latin American region being the first one talking and being the first ones speaking about election integrity and demanding and asking for the people’s will to be respected and the results to be published at the voting station level,” Miguel Pizarro, the opposition’s representative to the United Nations, told a panel organized by the Atlantic Council.
“I appreciate the U.S. effort and the U.S. engagement, and I strongly believe that what the region is doing is a real difference to what we had in the past. This is not — the regime cannot do the old ‘imperialism’ narrative, that this is something that they want to impose from the biggest countries or the biggest economies. This is the world. This is the left, this is the right, this is the center.”
Stateside, condemnation came from all sides, pushing for Maduro to show the receipts.
A motley, bipartisan and bicameral group led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released a statement Monday afternoon openly saying “dictator Nicolás Maduro has once again stolen a presidential election.”
The statement was joined by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Reps. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), as well as Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón (R).
“The Maduro dictatorship is experiencing an internal fracture, and members of the dictatorship know their status quo, which is filled with incompetence, is no longer sustainable,” read the statement.
“Let there be no doubt: the countries and international organizations backing this fraud of unimaginable proportions must be held accountable, as should members of the narco-regime and its ‘National Electoral Council.’”
Maduro’s power structures are increasingly isolated, scaring off some of its few allies in the democratic world.
“They’re sort of shooting themselves in the foot by prolonging and deepening their legitimacy crisis, basically their illegitimacy in electoral terms. They set this election in order to legitimize their government. They promoted this election the last two years as a way to establish and set government into a more status quo and establishment agenda, and what they have actually managed to do is to further their isolation,” said Guillermo Aveledo, a professor at the Universidad Metropolitana de Caracas.
But Maduro may not need allies outside his government.
“I’m not saying they cannot get away with this. I’m saying that they lost their actual purpose for this election,” Aveledo said.
And the Chávez-Maduro regime is motivated both by its own longevity in the face of international opposition and by the fact that the government’s top brass has no Plan B.
“Everybody was kind of waiting for something to happen before the election, as they usually would. They would cancel the election, they would cancel the candidate. They didn’t. They went on with it,” said Dany Bahar, associate professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute.
“I think the impression was not that this was going to be an obvious win [for the opposition]. I mean, they would find a way to turn it around. You have too much to lose, right? Yeah, everything to lose.”
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[55050] [55023] [55018] |
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55050 |
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Date: August 05, 2024 at 11:03:32
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: rump style "win" in venezuela... |
URL: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4811599-venezuela-maduro-election-tally/ |
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Venezuela’s opposition trounced Maduro, election receipts show
by Miranda Nazzaro - 08/05/24 1:53 PM ET
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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro waves a national flag.
Gabriela Oraa, AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro waves a national flag during a rally in support of his government in Caracas on Jan. 23, 2024.
Venezuela’s opposition candidate trounced President Nicolás Maduro in last week’s election, according to election tallies that show the opposition’s Edmundo González received more than double the votes of Maduro.
A Washington Post review, published Sunday, analyzed more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition. It found Maduro received about 30 percent of the vote (3,131,103 votes) compared to 67 percent for González (6,901,845 votes), further fueling doubts over Maduro’s declaration he won the race.
The tally sheets analyzed by The Post represented 79 percent of the voting tables from the July 28 election. The outlet noted that even if Maduro won every vote on the remaining 21 percent of tables, he would still fall behind González by more than 1.5 million votes.
An analysis by the Associated Press, published Saturday, found similar numbers after processing almost 24,000 images of tally sheets, also equal to about 79 percent of the nation’s voting machines.
The opposition party’s website, which tracked more than 80 percent of the country’s election results, showed a similar margin. According to the numbers, updated as Thursday, Gonzalez received an estimated 7,156,462 votes, while Maduro received 3,241461 votes.
“The result is clear: I obtained more than 67% of the votes,” González wrote in a post on X Sunday. “The regime has proclaimed false and unprovable results, they must be rejected and impartially verified. Only with the truth will Venezuela advance at this critical moment.”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (NEC) declared Maduro the winner without initially publishing precinct-level results from the voting machines.
Amid mounting pressure, the NEC posted results on Friday that it said were based on 96.87 percent of tally sheets. Those numbers showed Maduro with 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez with 5.3 million votes, the AP reported.
Major global groups are facing difficulties in overtly condemning the presidential election as fraudulent, as key member states play defense for Maduro.
The Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union were both headed toward a full-throated censure of Maduro until the Venezuela’s allies stepped in.
In Europe, Hungary’s authoritarian-friendly government blocked an EU statement expressing concerns about “flaws and irregularities” in the election.
The OAS Permanent Council failed to pass a resolution condemning Maduro on Wednesday, though 17 members voted in favor, 11 abstained — including Brazil and Colombia — and five delegations, including Mexico, skipped the session.
Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the three largest Latin American countries by population, led the push to give Maduro a pass.
The State Department on Thursday dismissed the significance of the OAS vote and released a strongly worded statement signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying official results were “deeply flawed.”
Blinken pointed to the opposition party’s tally sheets, which showed González as the true winner.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Blinken said.
Thousands of protestors flocked to the streets last week after the NEC’s declaration of Maduro as the winner and the governor said hundreds of protestors were arrested, per The AP.
Maduro and his campaign manager, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, tried to discredit the opposition party’s tally sheets, claiming they were missing signatures from the electoral council representative as well as poll workers and party representatives, The AP reported.
Rafael Bernal contributed reporting.
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55023 |
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Date: July 31, 2024 at 04:39:41
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: good old USA |
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"The Biden administration had worked ahead of the election to verify
safeguards against fraud at the polls, touting progress in getting Maduro to
agree even to permit opposition candidates and allow election observers in
the country. "
So if Maduro lost, we'd be saying, "yeah, he lost fair & square" we had
safeguards against fraud, but since he won, we're now demanding he 'show
receipts' despite all those safeguards we insisted on.
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55018 |
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Date: July 30, 2024 at 14:28:04
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: rump style "win" in venezuela... |
URL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/30/venezuelan-opposition-cries-fraud-people-reelect-president-maduro/ |
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counterpoint..
July 30, 2024
Venezuelan Opposition Cries Fraud; People Reelect President Maduro
by Roger Harris
July 29, 2024, Caracas, Venezuela.
Shortly before midnight, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, announced the re-election of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. Like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, the US-backed and funded far-right opposition cried fraud.
Maduro won with 51.2% of the vote. His nearest rival, the far-right US-backed candidate Edmundo Gonzalez trailed by 7 percentage points.
While the US corporate press refers to the “opposition” as if it were a unified bloc, eight other names appeared on the ballot. Unlike the US, where most of the electorate is polarized around two major parties, the fractious opposition in Venezuela is split into many mutually hostile camps whose dislike of the ruling Socialist Party is matched by their loathing for each other. And this is despite millions of US tax-payer dollars used to try to unify a cabal that would carry Washington’s water.
Sore losers
In the quarter century since Hugo Chavez initiated the Bolivarian Revolution when he was elected president in 1998, the Chavistas have won all but two of over thirty national contests. The far-right opposition celebrated when they won a national referendum along with the 2015 National Assembly contest. But every other time, the sore losers cried fraud.
Yet every one of these contests employed the same electoral system of multiple public audits, transparent counting, and an electronic vote backed with paper ballots. The system is incontrovertibly fraud-proof. Former US President Jimmy Carter, whose electoral monitoring organization had observed over ninety elections – including Venezuela’s – had declared the South American country’s system the best in the world.
Beyond the accusations, concrete proof of fraud had not been forthcoming in the past even though the data were publicly available.
I was one of 910 internationals representing over one hundred countries who had been invited to Venezuela to accompany this election. Yesterday, I visited polling stations in the state of Miranda.
I observed long but orderly lines of people going to the polls. At each one of the individual mesas (rooms at a polling station), representatives of political parties sat to monitor the process. I spoke to representatives of Maduro’s Socialist Party (PSUV) as well as other parties. All expressed confidence in the fraud-proof nature of their electoral system. In fact, they are very proud of their system regardless of political affiliation.
According to news reports, there were cyberattacks on the electoral system. At some polling stations, far-right opposition elements reportedly attacked electoral workers in attempts to disrupt the process.
But my experience visiting the polls could only be described as festive. Seeing our international invitee credentials, which we wore on lanyards around our necks, we were universally greeted with shouts of bienvenida (welcome), V-signs, and applause. These were clearly a people with great civic pride.
This reception was the same in “popular” Chavista neighborhoods as well as wealthier ones. Some hoped for “change” and others for continuing the Bolivarian Revolution. But all freely and enthusiastically participated in the electoral process.
The perennial accusations of fraud, trotted out every time the far-right gets rebuked by the voting public, were not reflected by the actions of the people on the ground as evidenced by their wholehearted participation.
July 25, the last day of official campaigning, was marked by the final political rallies. The far-right drew an estimated 100,000. I attended the Maduro rally of some one million. As far as I could see, people had jammed the main boulevards of Caracas. Clearly the Chavistas have a vast and dedicated base.
And they are wildly supportive of their current president Nicolas Maduro, who is seen as carrying on the legacy of the deceased founder of the Bolivarian project, Hugo Chavez, whose birthday is the same as this election day.
But it goes deeper than that. As the slogan yo soy Chavez (I am Chavez) indicates, the base sees the Bolivarian project not simply as one of their political leadership but more so as a collective endeavor.
The real electoral interference
Far greater than any accusation of fraud manufactured by the far-right opposition is the much more significant interference in the electoral process by Washington.
The vote for continuing the Bolivarian Revolution represents a mandate for national sovereignty. Venezuelans went to the polls knowing that a vote for the incumbent meant no relief from US unilateral coercive measures. These so-called “sanctions” have been part of Washington’s failed regime-change campaign explicitly designed to asphyxiate the Venezuelan economy and turn the people against their government.
This shout-out of, in Maduro’s words, “we are not anyone’s colony” was indeed heard around the world.
Roger D. Harris is with the US Peace Council and the 39-year-old human rights organization Task Force on the Americas.
Roger Harris is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas, a 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization.
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