(On the top right hand side of this page you can choose for a translation in the language of your choice in Google Translate)

De anti-Maduro propaganda in het westen is sinds de verkiezingen van afgelopen juli tot een hoog hysterisch niveau gestegen: de Venezolaanse president wordt zwaar gedemoniseerd en niet alleen daar hij de verkiezingen gestolen zou hebben. Zijn regering zou er voor hebben gezorgd dat het land economisch aan de grond zit, iets wat niet waar is, echter dat het economisch een stuk minder gaat dan pakweg 14 jaar geleden, heeft alles te maken met de illegale sancties die de VS het land heeft opgelegd, uiteraard gevolgd door de VS-bipslikkers: Canada, Groot-Brittannie en de EU….. 

Deze inhumane illegale sancties hebben door een gebrek aan medicijnen en andere humanitaire goederen al aan minstens 50.000 mensen het leven gekost, al ligt het werkelijk aantal waarschijnlijk veel hoger….. Door die sancties kunnen ook landen die wel vriendelijke relaties onderhouden met Venezuela en haar president, niet handelen met dat land daar ze onmiddellijk zullen worden getroffen door dezelfde sancties, dat geldt in het klein ook voor bedrijven die handel willen drijven met Venezuela…. De dollar is de grote boosdoener en dan met name het SWIFT betalingssysteem, als je daar als land van uitgesloten wordt is het moeilijk handel drijven met bedrijven in een ander land….  

De VS heeft al de zeer twijfelachtige eer de verreweg grootste terreurentiteit ter wereld te zijn, dit wordt nog eens versterkt met de illegale sancties van die entiteit tegen een enorm aantal landen, die sinds de jaren negentig aan minstens 2 miljoen mensen het leven moet hebben gekost, ofwel in feite ook vermoord door de VS….* 

Niet alleen dat >> de VS (vereniging van terreurstaten) heeft ook nog eens 5 miljard dollar gestolen die Venezuela in de VS had gestald voor de aankoop van medicijnen en medische hulpmiddelen….** 

In de illegale oorlogen die de VS deze eeuw is begonnen heeft dat land, met hulp van haar extra terreurleger ondersteund door haar slaafse NAVO-vazallen, al meer dan 5 miljoen mensen vermoord en dan te bedenken dat men zich hier druk maakt om Rusland!!! Om nog maar te zwijgen over de medeverantwoordelijkheid van de VS voor de genocide die Saoedi-Arabië heeft uitgevoerd op de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen en de genocide die Israël uitvoert op de Palestijnen in de Gazastrook en op de West Bank…..

Terug naar de anti-Venezolaanse propaganda: ook de president van de zogenaamde linkse regering in Chili, erkent de verkiezing van Maduro niet, wat niet zo vreemd is als je bedenkt dat het land economisch bijna totaal afhankelijk is van de handel met de VS… Hetzelfde geldt voor de zogenaamde linkse Braziliaanse president Lula da Silva, ook hij erkent de overwinning van Maduro niet, al lijkt het wat betreft Lula wel alsof hij wordt gechanteerd door de VS (het zal me niet verbazen als dat werkelijk zo is…..). Al zal ook Brazilië wel bang zijn om hetzelfde lot als Venezuela te ondergaan met illegale sancties van de VS, terwijl dat land toch ook de andere BRICS landen achter zich heeft staan (>> vandaar mijn vermoeden van chantage….).

In de reguliere westerse media doet men net of de laatste verkiezingen in Venezuela de druppel zijn die de spreekwoordelijke emmer doen overlopen, echter het is al jaren zo dat men in vooral de VS en de rest van het westen keihard liegt dat de Maduro een dictator is en dat hij niet democratisch is gekozen, dat zei men trouwens ook al over zijn voorganger Chavez, de man achter de Bolivariaanse revolutie die het lot van het grootste deel van de Venezolaanse bevolking veranderde en hen uit de armoede heeft getrokken.    

Met Chavez kregen de armen: huizen met stromend water en riolering, werd de bevolking gealfabetiseerd, kregen de armen recht op een goede en gratis gezondheidszorg (zelfs bewoners van de Antillen gingen vaak naar Venezuela voor medische ingrepen, die op de Antillen niet waren te krijgen), bovendien werd energie betaalbaar voor diezelfde arme bevolking. Logisch dan ook dat zij trouw bleven en blijven stemmen op de partij van Chavez en nu van Maduro, te weten de Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela >> PSUV (Verenigde Socialistische Partij van Venezuela) In het hieronder opgenomen artikel staat een kapitale fout >> daar wordt gesteld dat de oppositie en de PSUV al maanden van te voren hebben geschreeuwd dat ze de verkiezingsuitslag niet zullen accepteren, een wel heel domme fout, maar goed, ik heb deze laten staan om niet van manipulatie te worden beschuldigd… Trouwens zoals in het artikel al gesteld een wel heel vreemde gang van zaken om van te voren al te stellen dat je niet akkoord gaat met de uitslag, ofwel men wist inderdaad van te voren al dat maduro zou winnen, niet vreemd als je nagaat dat de PSUV in 2007 al meer dan 5,7 miljoen leden had!! Dat aantal is intussen uiteraard een stuk hoger, zie ook de enorme opkomst als er weer een manifestatie of demonstratie is ten goede van Maduro en zijn partij, daar kunnen de demonstraties van de oppositie bij lange na niet tegenop!! (maar nogmaals: niet vreemd als je ziet wat Chavez en Maduro hebben gedaan voor de bevolking!!)

Zoals het ging met Chili onder Allende (die in feite werd vermoord met de eerste door onder andere de CIA georganiseerde en gefinancierde 9/11 in 1973 (een staatsgreep tegen een democratisch gekozen regering), duldt de VS geen succesvol socialistisch bewind in wat dat agressieve land ziet als haar achtertuin…. Vandaar dat de VS met haar slaafse vazallen al jaren met de grootste leugens probeert om Venezuela te demoniseren, heeft het meermaals geprobeerd een opstand te organiseren in dat land en heeft het minstens twee keer geprobeerd een coup te plegen, de laatste met de destijds door de VS aangewezen president, ‘oppositieleider’ Guaidó, een oppositieleider die amper of niet bekend was in Venezuela en die net aan 2% van de stemmen had behaald!! (door Google nog steeds aangeduid als voormalig waarnemend president…. ha! ha! ha! Moet je nagaan hetzelfde Google platform weert berichten die volgens de scherpslijper-censors daar desinformatie brengen…. ha! ha! ha! ha!)

Het leukst van al is wel dat het westen met de laatste verkiezingen in Venezuela dezelfde tactiek volgt als Trump in 2020 >> het ontkennen van de verkiezingsoverwinning door Biden…. ha! ha! ha! ha!

Het is een schande dat ook Nederland en de EU achter de leugens staan van de VS en er met ons belastinggeld sancties zijn getroffen tegen het volk van Venezuela, want daar komt het op neer, hoe men ook liegt dat de sancties niet het volk zullen treffen en niet worden toegepast op humanitaire middelen als medicijnen en voedsel….. Het tegendeel is ‘iets te vaak’ bewezen, zie alleen al het eerder aangehaalde aantal met sancties vermoorde mensen (waar 2 miljoen nog een lage schatting is, als je nagaat dat de illegale sancties van de VS en haar westerse bipslikkers tegen Irak van eind negentiger jaren die alleen al aan meer dan 500.000 kinderen het leven heeft gekost…. De verantwoordelijke minister van BuZa onder Clinton, hare kwaadaardigheid Madeleine Albright, durfde jaren later in een interview te zeggen dat ze geen moeite had met die 500.000 (vermoorde) dode kinderen en dat haar beleid in deze juist is geweest….. En die tang durfde te zeggen dat er in de hel een speciale plaats is voor vrouwen die elkaar niet steunen…. De hel bestaat niet anders had die ellendige massamoordenaar allang op die speciale plek gezeten!!!  

Lees het volgende artikel en geeft het door, het is de hoogste tijd dat men weet wat de waarheid is over wat er in Venezuela gebeurt…. Opvallend weer hè, dat er geen regulier westers nieuwsplatform is dat wat betreft Venezuela met een tegengeluid komt!! Dit zou voor velen een teken moeten zijn dat er iets heel ernstig mis is met deze berichtgeving (als die over Oekraïne), echter men ligt blijkbaar in voetbal-, vakantie- en koop-coma…..

Het volgende artikel werd 5 september 2024 gepubliceerd op Systemic Disorder.

(als je de Engelse taal niet beheerst, zet dan de tekst om in Nederlands met behulp van Google translate dat je rechts bovenaan deze pagina ziet staan, klik eerst in het menu op ‘Engels’, waarna je weer kan klikken op die vertaalapp, daarna zie je bovenaan in het menu ‘Nederlands’ staan >> klik daarop en de hele tekst staat vervolgens in het Nederlands, de vertaling is van een redelijk goede kwaliteit.)

U.S.,
opposition claims on Venezuela election fall apart under scrutiny 

by Systemic
Disorder

Although
any country that challenges domination by United States corporate or
military power will inevitably be the target of a sustained
demonization campaign, the lies consistently issued in a torrent
against Venezuela are beyond the usual level of invective. Venezuela
is the most lied-about country in the corporate press of the Global
North, especially in U.S. corporate media outlets.

That
Venezuela has sought to align its economy to benefit its own
people, instituting
an impressive array of social services,
health programs and political structures to facilitate grassroots
participation, has drawn the consistent ire of U.S. authorities.
An unrelenting
cascade of lies is
necessary to generate public support for the unrelenting campaign
targeting the Bolivarian Revolution.

We’ve
had more than a month of daily screeds declaring the Venezuela
President Nicolás Maduro has lost his bid for re-election. How is
this determined? The U.S. government declared that Maduro must go,
continuing an offensive that began as soon as took office following
the untimely death of Hugo Chávez. That seems to be all the “proof”
needed. The right-wing opposition to Maduro and the United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV) screamed that it would not recognize the
results of the July 28 election months ahead of time — if they were
so confident of victory why denigrate the election in advance? —
and predictably screamed louder when the results were announced.

Before
we dive into the details, which leaves the opposition’s case too
weak to be sustained, let’s think about a parallel. Donald Trump
and his fascist wanna-be followers said any result in which he lost
to Joe Biden would not be recognized and four years later they
continue to insist on a Trump victory. Even the most cursory
examination shows the speciousness of the Trump gang’s complaints,
and every court challenge has been swiftly swatted down. Or in
Brazil, another aspirant to a dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro, similarly
claimed the vote was rigged; nobody other than his hard-core
followers takes such claims seriously.

^{Venezuelans
rally for the PSUV (photo by Francisco Trías/Tricontinental)}

Why
then should we take the claims of the Democratic Unitary Platform
(PUD) opposition coalition and its candidate, Edmundo González,
seriously? The PUD has yet to provide definitive proof that it won
the election, much less with an absurd 70 percent of the vote. Given
the large reservoir of support for the Maduro administration and the
PSUV, the PUD would have given itself a modicum of respectability had
it conjured a more plausible total, say just above 50 percent. Just
on the basis of the 70 percent claim, already our eyebrows should be
raised. Using the work of investigative reporters who have delved
into the alleged voting records, which will be discussed below, the
opposition’s claims fall apart. But even without that
investigation, what locales have been presented? Undoubtedly, there
are neighborhoods where the PUD did score 70 percent or perhaps more.
But how representative are those? Another question not asked. But the
investigations reveal that even most of these alleged voting records
posted online by the PUD are doctored. In plain language, the
evidence indicates they are not real.

To
be sure, it would be for the best for Venezuela’s National
Electoral Council (CNE) to post the detailed records so many, not
only the opposition, demands. Under Venezuelan law, the CNE had 30
days to post those results and we are past that deadline. An online
newspaper that supports the Venezuelan government, the Orinoco
Tribune,
on September 3 issued a
call for the prompt publishing of
the detailed election results, noting the cyberattacks and attacks on
the country’s electricity system that undoubtedly have hampered the
CNE’s work but nonetheless pointing out alternatives to publishing
on its website that should be utilized promptly. These delays only
add doubt to an already controversial situation.

Interestingly,
but of course not surprisingly, there has been not a word in U.S.
corporate media about the one party that was blocked from a candidate
of its own choosing — the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). A
ruling by the Supreme Court shamefully imposed
a new leadership on
the PCV, which the party sternly denounced as an illegal intervention
in its internal affairs. The PCV said the seven people the court
imposed as its new leadership are not party members and thus cannot
occupy party offices. As a result of this gross interference, the PCV
did not run a proper campaign because the imposed leadership backs
Maduro. Even firm supporters of the PSUV government should condemn
this meddling.

Why
did the opposition refuse to participate in the examination?

What
stands out here is that the PUD would not provide its alleged
evidence to the Supreme Court of Venezuela after President Maduro
asked that the high court examine the results announced by the CNE.
There were eight other candidates other than President Maduro and
Ambassador González. Yet Ambassador González was only one of the 10
candidates to refuse to provide the ballot records in their
possession. All nine of the other candidates did so. Instead, the PUD
created a website and posted their alleged ballots online, a
violation of Venezuelan law that states only the CNE, an independent
governmental branch, is authorized to do so. (How these ballot
records are created and why candidates and parties would have them
will be explained below.)

The Orinoco
Tribune reported
on August 23, in an article detailing
the process the Supreme Court followed,
“the magistrates concluded that the bulletins issued by the CNE
were supported by the voting records transmitted by each of the
voting machines and are in full agreement with the data provided by
the national aggregation centers.” This was predictably denounced
by Ambassador González, the PUD and the PUD’s leader, María
Corina Machado, who has been involved in more than one plot to
forcibly unseat the government. It can also be noted that the PUD
includes the two discredited corporate parties, Democratic Action and
COPEI, that had alternated in power until the sweeping Chávez
victory of 1998 brought about the Bolivarian Revolution, which those
parties have bitterly opposed every since, to the point of endorsing
the 2002 coup that unseated Chávez for two days before popular
resistance put him back in
power.

If
the PUD really possesses evidence of fraud, as they continue to
loudly assert, why won’t they put forth their evidence? Their
refusal should raise doubts, but evidently not for the corporate
media, faithful stenographers of the U.S. government and U.S.
multinational capital on all things Venezuela. Notably, all other
candidates attended an August 2 Supreme Court hearing, held as part
of the electoral audit process. At this hearing, all
presidential candidates
were formally notified that
they were required to submit “all required legal documents of
juridical relevance,” including all ballot records.

^{Venezuela
remains in the cross-hairs (photo courtesy of Venezuelanalysis)}

Other
candidates contesting the presidential election confirmed their
participation in the Supreme Court’s examination. One of those
candidates, Claudio Fermín of Soluciones, called
for all candidates to
back their claims with evidence. He said, “What is not
comprehensible is that some claim to have the voting records [that
backed their electoral victory] but do not submit them [to the
court]. The instance to resolve this matter is the Electoral Chamber
of the Supreme Court of Justice, not social media or a virtual court,
and much less the heads of state or ambassadors of six or seven
foreign powers.”

One
of the reasons the far right opposition cites for its alleged
landslide victory are polls that supposedly predicted a González
landslide victory. But whose polls? The poll cited was produced by an
outfit called Edison Research. It has been reported that Edison
Research is a “firm that is closely linked to the US government and
does work for US state propaganda outlets that were founded by the
CIA,” according to an Orinoco
Tribune report.
The Edison exit poll forecast a 65 percent share for Ambassador
González. The Tribune report
noted that the polling firm Hinterlaces, which the newspaper called
“the most respectable independent firm in the country,” estimated
that President Maduro would receive 54.6 percent of the vote in its
exit poll. This latter exit poll has of course been ignored by the
corporate media. According to the Tribune, Edison’s
top clients include the
Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle
East Broadcasting Networks, each of which is a propaganda arm of the
U.S. government. The original funder of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty is the Central Intelligence Agency.

Are
the ballots published online by the Unitary Platform legitimate?

Let
us now turn to the ballot records published online by the PUD that
the far right coalition claims reveals irregularities in the CNE’s
announced vote totals. A Spanish investigative reporter, Román
Cuesta, examined the PUD documents from Tinaquillo, a city in the
state of Cojedes, which he chose at random. Mr. Cuesta’s results
were detailed by Misión
Verdad,
which describes itself as a consortium of independent researchers.
According to Mr. Cuesta, of the 61 documents representing 61 polling
stations, 52
were faked.
These 52 documents contained “irregularities such as flat
signatures, presumably false signatures, incomplete QR codes and the
lack of the digital signature code of the voting machine.”
Furthermore, Misión
Verdad reported,
“He also highlighted irregular patterns and signs of forgery in the
signatures found, which in several cases look more like a free
drawing than a personal signature. Once again, the lack of signatures
was present, a serious irregularity in an electoral record that
claims to be genuine.”

Mr.
Cuesta found that “85% of the records from the municipality of
Tinaquillo have problems with signatures, incomplete QR codes and a
complete lack of machine codes.” These irregularities are
significant, Misión
Verdad reports:

“The
problem of QR codes and machine codes is especially important since,
due to an incomplete QR code, or the absence of codes, said document
cannot offer reliable information about a polling station and,
consequently, cannot be verified. This gives rise to the presumption
of data tampering or editing of the opposition ‘records’, as
established by the metadata analysis. If these have been edited and
new numbers have been added to favour Edmundo González Urrutia, by
eliminating the QR codes and codes from the machine, the information
will be unverifiable.”

^{The
Bosque de el Valle in Mérida state (photo by Jorge Paparoni)}

In reporting
on the PUD’s problematic documents,
the Spanish online newspaper Diario
Red said
many opposition documents lack the signatures of witness from the
participating parties as well as those of the operators of the
machines used in the process, contrary to Venezuela electoral law
that these signatures are mandatory (and that any party observers may
record any reservations they may have). Furthermore, in “hundreds
of cases,” signatures appear to be forgeries, because “the
signatures of the members of these electoral tables appeared
duplicated and when comparing them, it was evident that the shape of
the letters and the movement patterns pointed to a possible forgery”
and that stamps and fingerprint scans are often placed on top of
signatures, making it impossible to verify them. There are also
differences in the spelling of names printed on ballots and how those
names were signed.

Questions
about the PUD documents had already been raised — the Diario
Red report
says that “Several opposition parties have already complained that
the results of their votes do not match those they posted.”
The Diario
Red report
concludes with a damning summation:

“The
opposition’s strategy included several parallel maneuvers,
essential for the coup to be successful. One of them was based on the
publication of this page full of manipulated minutes, after making
the counting process difficult with computer attacks on the
Venezuelan electoral bodies, to create the favorable climate inside
and outside the country.”

Do
analyses of voting trends provide support for the opposition claims?

Two
analyses of Venezuelan voting patterns, comparing the turnout and
results of the July 28 election with two decades of past voting also
raise doubts about the opposition claims. Of course, voting patterns
can change and any individual election can result in a change from
past elections. But even President Maduro’s total of 52 percent on
6.4 million votes, as announced by the CNE, represents a weaker
showing than past presidential elections for the PSUV candidates.
Ambassador González polled 43 percent on 5.3 million votes. Only one
other candidate reached even 1 percent.

How
do these figures comport with Venezuelan voting patterns, as compared
to the vote totals asserted by the PUD opposition bloc? A
detailed analysis
published in Venezuelanalysis,
noting President Maduro’s support declining from 68 percent in
2018, asks: “Does this suggest that Maduro’s popularity is waning
and that he could not have possibly won the 2024 vote? Not
necessarily.” The major opposition bloc boycotted the 2018 election
and the resulting abstentions swelled the percentage for the PSUV and
resulted in the lowest participation level of any presidential
election going back to the late 1990s. For the 2024 election, the 6.4
million votes cast for President Maduro represents a decline from
recent presidential elections but is within reasonable range of those
results. The lowest total of any election since the 1998 election of
Chávez was the 4.4 million votes cast in the 2007 constitutional
referendum that the PSUV government lost by two percentage points, on
a turnout similar to the 2024 presidential election. Yet the PUD
claims that President Maduro won only 3.3 million votes.

Of
course, voting totals for an incumbent can decline, sometimes
sharply. But is PUD’s paltry total realistic?
The Venezuelanalysis analysis
finds it is not. “[T]he 6.40 million votes for Maduro’s Partido
Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) on July 28 is entirely
plausible, while the insane claim of the fictitious U.S.-driven sweep
is not at all convincing. On the contrary, the figures show that the
only fraud consists of the opposition’s posturing,” the analysis
concludes. It should be noted that Venezuelanalysis is
consistently an excellent source of information; although it is
broadly supportive of the Bolivarian Revolution it also routinely
publishes articles critical of the PSUV.

^{Hugo
Chávez swearing in as Venezuela president in 2013 (photo by AVN,
Prensa Presidencial/Venezuelanalysis)}

A
separate analysis, published
by Misión
Verdad,
also notes that the 3.3 million vote total put forth by the PUD
opposition would be wildly out of line with all previous voting
patterns. Such a total would represent a dramatic decline in
government support despite the fact that a far smaller decline was
seen from 2013 to 2018, when Venezuela’s economy, under severe
stress due to U.S. sanctions, was in far worse shape. A vote total of
3.3 million would represent “a notably adverse national context or
with such a serious negative accumulation that it would have implied
the rupture of the cohesion of the Chávista forces and their support
base in a deep, generalized and extended way. A party could
consolidate its support base only in extraordinary circumstances. The
2018-2024 period has not seen such upheavals.” And although
difficulties certainly remain for Venezuelans, for this election,
“the exchange rate was stabilized, hyperinflation was stopped, and
price increases were minimized,” Misión
Verdad writes.
Thus, a significant drop in support would be more plausible for 2018
than for this year.

Additionally,
the grassroots base of the PSUV remains intact. “There are more
than 5 million active militia members, who are fully identified with
Chavismo,” Misión
Verdad writes.
“The PSUV party has an organizational structure of 300 thousand
street and community leaders.” Adding “100,000 social and
community organizations, parties and movements of various kinds that
form a support base,” outside the PSUV (the PSUV technically ran as
the largest component of the Great Patriotic Pole), the Misión
Verdad analysis
estimates a base of at least 6 million, meaning that an implausible
half of the engaged Chávista movement would have not voted or voted
for the opposition, something that has never come remotely close to
happening. Finally, because the PSUV base routinely turns out for
presidential elections, while opposition voters are much less
consistent, the opposition does better in high-turnout elections. But
the July 28 election did not see a high turnout; with 58 percent of
eligible voters casting a ballot, it falls in the broad middle of
historic turnouts.

It
might also be noted that the PUD’s program of dismantling the
social advances of the Bolivarian Revolution and selling off the
country’s assets, including privatizing the state oil company, are
widely disliked, certainly by the Chávista base that hardly could be
persuaded to vote for destroying all that has been built over 25
years.

Does
Venezuela still have its “best in the world” election system?

Admittedly,
that is a subjective question without a definitive answer, but it can
be noted that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, then at the helm of
the Carter Center, once called the Venezuelan election system “the
best in the world.”
To support that assessment, the Carter
Center said in 2012:

“One
of the key aspects of the security control mechanisms involves the
construction of an encryption key — a string of characters —
created by contributions from the opposition, government, and
[National Electoral Council], which is placed on all the machines
once the software source-code has been reviewed by all the party
experts. The software on the machines cannot then be tampered with
unless all three parties join together to ‘open’ the machines and
change the software. In addition, each voting system machine has its
own individual digital signature that detects if there is any
modification to the machine. If the voting count is somehow tampered
with despite these security mechanisms, it should be detectable …
because of the various manual verification mechanisms.”

Sadly,
the Carter Center within a day of the July 28 election, denounced
the results,
asserting that it “did not meet international standards of
electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.” The
Center based this on the CNE’s “failure to announce disaggregated
results by polling station,” although Venezuela law allows for 30
days for those results to be published, not one day. The Center
asserted that there were “relatively few places of registration”
but acknowledged that “Venezuelan citizens turned out peacefully
and in large numbers to express their will on election day.”

That
is a strong contrast with the report issued by the National Lawyers
Guild, an organization of U.S. lawyers who also had observers in
Venezuela. On July 29, the
Guild said its
“delegation observed a transparent, fair voting process with
scrupulous attention to legitimacy, access to the polls, and
pluralism.” In an
August 9 statement,
the Guild announced that it “disputes repeated Carter Center press
statements” and that the Center has failed to use necessary “care
and caution” in its statements. The Carter Center has shifted
strongly to the right and now mirrors U.S. government policy. In the
August 9 statement, the National Lawyer Guild issued this summary:

“It
appears that Carter Center leadership has shifted to the right over
the last several years, impacting its overall work in the US and
around the world.  The Center’s Chief Executive Officer, Paige
Alexander, worked for [the United States Agency for International
Development] for over 15 years, now called “the
new CIA.” 
She also sits on the southeast chapter board of the widely
discredited Anti-Defamation League, which as recently as 2017 advised
local police to plant
undercover agents in
anti-racist organizations in the US. A recent Center
for Constitutional Rights report demonstrated how they use
counterterrorism laws to
target Palestinian solidarity organizers in the U.S., undermining
free speech and civil rights. Jennie K. Lincoln, the Center’s
senior advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean, is a former
consultant with the Organization of American States, from which
Venezuela withdrew in 2017 after repeated OAS attempts to undermine
Venezuelan democracy and foment instability. Although we recognize
that the Carter Center’s Democracy Program is praised for its
election monitoring across the world, we are concerned that their
funding sources, which include the US
State Department, USAID, EU and UK government,
make them vulnerable to imperialist
political pressure.
This may explain the hastiness of the Center in issuing its various
statements and paralleling the US news cycle.”

The
Guild also took exception with the Center’s statement that voting
was peaceful, saying that in the last hours of voting, “violent
mobs targeted polling stations across the country to prevent the
counting of the voting receipts and the distribution of the
tallies” and that the Center “also failed to note the targeted
attacks on election observers.” These violent disruptive activities
were observed first-hand by its observers, the Guild said. Nor has
the Center made any reference to the “violence unleashed by the
US-backed opposition,” with attacks on buses, security personnel, a
hospital and the murder of two PSUV supporters. It should also be
noted that the Agency for International Development is notorious for
its political interference in countries around the world. 

How
does the Venezuelan election system work?

Separate
detailed explanations have been published online
by Venezuelanalysis and Orinoco
Tribune.
Here we will briefly summarize these explanations.

According
to Venezuelanalysis,voters
go to the polls “with their national ID card with their unique ID
number, photo, and fingerprint on.” No other identification is
needed. Biometric authentication is used to activate voting machines.
Votes are stored on the machines in random order to further ensure
the integrity of votes. But prior to the actual vote, an extensive
process is used to safeguard the vote, Venezuelanalysis writes:

“Venezuela’s
entire electoral process has and will go through 16 different audits
per process. These audits include auditing of the electoral register,
the software, the voting books, the hardware, etc. Each audit is not
only presided over by international observers, but also
representatives of each participating political party. It is common
for representatives from right-wing parties which later criticize the
electoral process to make use of their right to send representatives
to each audit, signing that they are happy with proceedings at the
end.”

After
voting on a machine, there is a physical printout that voters can
check to confirm their vote was recorded accurately, and the printed
receipt is deposited in a box, which can be monitored by any
representative, so that results as recorded electronically can be
confirmed. The vote itself was witnessed by international observers.
The paper printouts are integral to the
system, Venezuelanalysis writes:

“Once
tally scrutinization on the machine finishes, a random paper ballot
audit is announced where the machines to be audited are randomly
selected drawing numbers, and the machine’s serial number is
recorded. 53% of all voting machines in the country are audited on
voting day before totalisation. This audit is public (a citizens
audit) meaning that members of the community can come into the voting
center to observe and corroborate the process. The audit checks
totalisation tallies per candidate between the electronic result and
the physical paper receipts in the box which is now opened. … The
audit report is signed by election poll staff and observers from each
party present, then sealed and handed to the military for delivery to
the CNE. Copies of the report are handed over to the representatives
of the two highest vote-getters.”

In
its report detailing the election process, the Orinoco
Tribune noted
several steps that are taken, including audits of the machines and
their software, and verifications of eligible voters. The system that
the Carter Center earlier found excellent continues to be used.

Will
foreign support swing behind the election results?

The
unrelenting U.S. government campaign against the return of President
Maduro to Miraflores Palace — the Biden administration had
made it abundantly clear it would not accept any result other than
the one it wanted — seems to have had an effect. Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Colombian President
Gustavo Petro, although issuing tepid calls to respect Venezuela’s
sovereignty, have called for a re-vote, implying that the results of
July 28 should not be recognized. Lula, for whatever reason, seems to
have lost his nerve and perhaps has momentarily forgotten the long
history of U.S. imperialism and interference in Latin America,
including U.S.
participation in the 1964 coup that
brought a brutal military dictatorship to power in order that the
Brazilian economy be oriented toward U.S. goals.

Less
surprising is the condemnations issued by Chile President Gabriel
Boric, who has steadily moved rightward since winning election on a
wave of left and left-center support. President Boric said he refuses
to recognize President Maduro’s “self-proclaimed”
victory, saying he has “no doubt” there was electoral fraud. That
echoes the stances taken by the right-wing heads of state in South
America, including Argentina. In response, the president of the
Communist Party of Chile, Lautaro Carmona, said his party does
recognize President Maduro’s victory.
The C.P. of Chile is a part of President Boric’s coalition. The
party previously said the international community should “refrain
from adopting positions that could foster a climate of
confrontation.”

A Misión
Verdad commentary
speculated that condemning President Maduro is a
“lifeline” for President Boric,
a lifeline needed because of resistance to his rightward turn from
within his coalition and intensified pushback by the congressional
opposition with elections scheduled for later this year and in 2025.
The Chilean right, like its counterparts elsewhere, has furiously
denounced the July 28 election results and has demanded President
Boric do so; in addition, the U.S. is Chile’s biggest trade
partner.

If
there is any one certainty in this affair, it is that the unrelenting
hostility of the U.S. government will
continue. From the Bush II/Cheney administration’s support for the
2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, to the Obama administration’s
declaration of Venezuela as a “a national security threat” to the
Trump administration’s repeated threats of a military invasion and
escalation of sanctions to the Biden administration’s continuation
of his predecessor’s policies — all done with inhumane sanctions
that in 2018 alone caused
40,000 deaths with
an estimated 300,000 people considered “to be at risk because of
lack of access to medicines or treatment.” These sanctions,
targeting an entire population, are illegal under both U.S. and
international law. The United States is able to enforce its
sanctions, and force other countries to comply, because of
its stranglehold
on the world financial system,
the linchpin of which is the use of the U.S. dollar for most
international transactions.

The
U.S. government possesses a power that no country has ever held, not
even Britain at the height of its empire. And that government,
regardless of which party or what personality is in the White House
or in control of Congress, is ruthless in using this power to impose
its will. And that government also covets access to Venezuelan oil on
its terms, not on Venezuelan terms. We do well to consider the full
spectrum of international interests before drawing conclusions about
a Global South country, particularly one long the target of lies,
sanctions, coup attempts and imperial maneuvers.

========================================================

* Zie wat betreft illegale sancties: ‘Honderdduizenden mensen zijn dodelijk slachtoffer van illegale sancties opgelegd door de VS (en overgenomen door EU, Canada en GB)‘ (15 augustus 2024)

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** Zie: ‘VS heeft beslag gelegd op 5 miljard dollar van Venezuela voor medicijnaankopen‘ (30 maart 2019)

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Voor
de bezoekers die Engels niet kunnen lezen: voor de niet op dit blog
gepubliceerde artikelen in het Engels
onder de links, moet je zelf even een vertaalapp zoeken op het web.
Er zijn gratis apps van redelijke kwaliteit die dit kunnen (soms in 2
of of meer delen >> bij lange artikelen). Af en toe krijg
je bij het openen van een nieuwe pagina een pop-up die vraagt of je
een vertaling wilt hebben als de bewuste pagina in een andere taal is
gesteld.

Visitors
who can’t read Dutch for the articles other than from this blog: on
the web you can find free translation apps with reasonable quality,
which can do the job (it’s possible you have to do it 2 or more times
>> with lengthy articles) Sometimes when
you open a new page in an other language, you get a pop-up with the
question if you need a translation.

Zie ook: ‘Het Venezolaanse volk heeft gesproken: de verkiezingen geanalyseerd door Vijay Prashad plus commentaar van Roger Harris‘  (2 augustus 2024)

‘Links wint belangrijke presidentsverkiezingen in Venezuela‘ (29 juli 2024) Een artikel van dewereldmorgen.be  

‘Westerse sancties onder leiding van de VS: niets anders dan een grove vorm van terreur‘ (16 februari 2024)

‘VS laat ware gezicht zien: Bolton geeft toe elders meerdere staatsgrepen te hebben gepland‘ (16 juli 2022)

‘NAVO-lid Colombia en de VS proberen uit alle macht eerlijke verkiezingen te voorkomen……‘ (27mei 2022) En zie de berichten onder de links in dat schrijven!!

‘Putin wast het westen nog eens de oren‘ (9 maart 2022)