By Marina Menéndez Quintero on August 4, 2024 from Havana
supporters of Maduro celebrate the continuation of the Bolivarian Revolution. photo: Zoe Alexander
There are many elements that show the weaknesses of the masquerade unfolding against Venezuela, above all, of its dangers is their inadmissible demand that the National Electoral Council (CNE) open the alleged “chest” of the voting records to the world. This was the rude warning formulated three days ago by the White House Security Council through its spokesman, John Kirby, when he stated in a press conference that his country is “running out of patience”.
That is a phrase of extreme imperial insolence, and a glimpse at even more serious actions than the current punitive measures against the Bolivarian nation, and to which all those who ride the bandwagon of questioning would be contributing, even in good faith.
There is no need to question why anyone should demand an obligatory concession for a request of such interference that has never been imposed on any country; much less when the “requirement” is based on the assertions of a political tendency that has demonstrated its lack of loyalty to the Homeland with the repeated request for foreign interventions, and the encouragement of disorder and violence within its country, two attitudes that it is now again sustaining. But, above all, because it has not given proof of being in the majority.
Why should greater credibility be given to the unsubstantiated assertions of María Corina Machado and Edmundo González (who for weeks before the voting let it be known that they would not recognize the results) than to the still in process computations of the CNE, the entity that in its second bulletin, this Friday, ratified the victory of Nicolás Maduro? Meanwhile Machado’s Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) refused to attend the hearing convened by the Supreme Court, which confirms that there is not a drop of innocence in her actions.
But the impossibilities to comply with the requests for “transparency” that the Venezuelan institutionality wants to assert are not only of a moral nature, but also of a technical nature.
The first thing that jumps out is that even the CNE has not concluded the process of computing one hundred percent of the tally sheets, for which it has a term length of 30 days, according to the law. The other thing is that they want to ignore an essential condition which, precisely, is the one that gives reliability and shields the Venezuelan electoral system from possible frauds. After all, it is the only electoral process in the world computerized from “end to end”, that is; from the casting of the vote, which is done by marking on a computer, to the counting of the votes and the issuance of the results.
Therefore, what exists are voting vouchers that the machine gives to each person after marking his vote on the screen, as proof that the computer registered the option desired by him.
As explained by Venezuelan experts, such as the constitutional lawyer and specialist in electoral matters Olga Alvarez, the software of the voting, scrutiny and totalization processes is audited and certified with the participation of the political parties and election observers. So the function of the latter is to denounce the irregularities that occur at the time of voting and to issue the vouchers. There is no manual counting or possibility of entering falsified data.
The avenue for the parties that doubt the results is to file a formal complaint before the competent bodies, as President Maduro has done by going to the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to file an appeal, so that this entity may be the one to compare the PSUV and opposition records, and settle the dispute raised by the opposition.
The first thing the world saw were the acts of vandalism promoted by that right wing, which tried to reinstate the guarimbera violence of 2017. Twenty-four hours after the closing of the polls, the first victims were passers-by without any piece of red color indicating attachment to the PSUV, who were attacked by groups of three and four young men on the suspicion that the other was a “chavista”. A brutal hunt to sow terror and destabilize, not to mention the subsequent arson attacks on medical centers, mayors’ offices, schools, PSUV headquarters and dozens of institutions in different states, just to mention a few acts of vandalism.
One wonders where are the civilized demonstrations of that great mass of voters that the Platform of Democratic Unity claims to have, and whose members are distinguished for being mostly of white complexion, and characteristics in their appearance that show them as a wealthier class, different from the people of the town, and far from those subjects that, it has been denounced, and are paid by the right wing to commit misdeeds bordering on fascism.
There are antecedents that allowed foreseeing the option of fraud and disorder as a plan of the right wing with evident support from outside. These range from the refusal of the Platform to commit itself to accept the results since a month before the elections, to little publicized events such as the protests that took place on the night of election Sunday at the Venezuelan Embassy in Argentina, that even had the conspiratorial presence of the Foreign Minister of that country, Diana Mondino. This took place even before the CNE released the first report of the victory of Maduro.
The Venezuelan President has asserted that his coalition, Polo Patriotico, will contribute one hundred percent of its polling station tally sheets for the auditing work requested to the Supreme Court. Will María Corina and the Platform do the same?
Far from officially exposing their alleged evidence, the right-wing opposition insists on doing it in a subversive manner on its web page. It accepts whatever they put up. The collation of that alleged evidence has shown the existence of names of voters deceased in 2016, among other traps such as the demand for minimum percentages of voting certificates that are far from totaling 80 percent of the voting certifications that the Platform claims to have.
In addition, the head of the Electoral Chamber of this Court demanded to have the minutes of the scrutiny of the polling stations at the national level, the final totalization of the electoral process and those of the awarding and proclamation of the mentioned process, and asked the NEC for the evidence related to the cybernetic attack denounced by the electoral body on Sunday night, which delayed the counting process and affected its system.
The truth exposing this US backed farce will continue to come out. But above all else Venezuela must be respected.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English