Four United Nations experts who witnessed the elections and subsequent events disapprove of the Venezuelan electoral body
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) “did not comply” with the basic measures of “transparency and integrity” in the July 28 presidential elections, which the opposition denounces as a fraud, concludes a preliminary report by a panel of UN experts published on Tuesday.
The CNE “did not comply with the basic transparency and integrity measures that are essential for the holding of credible elections. Nor did it follow the national legal and regulatory provisions, and all the deadlines set were not met,” says the report of the four electoral specialists deployed in the South American country by the United Nations.
The CNE, without showing the electoral records since then, proclaimed re-elected with 52% of the votes to President Nicolas Maduro for a third six-year term. But the opposition led by María Corina Machado claims the victory of its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, and has denounced a fraud.
The results also unleashed protests that leave 25 dead, 192 injured and more than 2,400 detainees.
“The announcement of the outcome of an election without the publication of its details or the dissemination of tabulated results to the candidates is unprecedented in contemporary democratic elections,” add UN experts, who were in Venezuela from the end of June to August 2.
The document notes that the Venezuelan authorities “cooperated and supported the deployment of the panel,” but that after the closure of the polls, “unfortunately, and despite a request sent by note verbale, could not meet with the Board of Directors of the CNE before its departure.”
In questioning criticism from the Carter Center and before the publication of the report of the UN panel, the president of the Venezuelan Parliament, the Chavista leader Jorge Rodríguez, proposed to reform the law so that “never again” foreign envoys participate as observers or go to the country “to take a position” during the country’s elections.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also expressed concern on Tuesday about arbitrary detentions in Venezuela during post-election protests and the disproportionate use of force that fuel the “climate of fear” since the presidential elections.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo