The Organization of American States (OAS) published a forceful statement on Tuesday after the elections in Venezuela, in which it concluded that the government of Nicolás Maduro perpetrated the “most aberrant manipulation.”
“The worst form of repression, the most vile, is to prevent the people from finding solutions through elections. The obligation of each institution in Venezuela should be to ensure freedom, justice, and transparency in the electoral process. The people should have the maximum guarantees of political freedom to be able to express themselves at the polls, and to protect the rights of citizens to be elected,” the organization’s statement began.
He continued: “Throughout this electoral process, the Venezuelan regime has been applying its repressive scheme, complemented by actions aimed at completely distorting the electoral result, making it open to the most aberrant manipulation. This manipulation continues to this day.”
“There has been talk of an audit or a recount of the minutes of electoral material that has not had the slightest conditions of security and control. Likewise, we must bear in mind that, with respect to audits, the regime is at least 11 years behind, when it committed itself to UNASUR (in a meeting on April 18, 2013 in Lima) to carry out a 100% audit of the minutes of the electoral process of April 14, 2013. It is obvious to say that this was never carried out. It is obvious that a new mockery would be unacceptable,” he added.
The OAS also stated that, “taking into account that the opposition campaign command has already presented the records by which it would have won the election and Maduro, including the CNE, has not yet been able to present the records by which it would have won, which at this point would be laughable and pathetic if it were not tragic; in this context it is imperative to know about Maduro’s acceptance of the records in the hands of the opposition and consequently accept his electoral defeat and open the way to the return to democracy in Venezuela. If this is not done, it would be necessary to hold new elections, but in this case with the EOMs of the European Union and the OAS present and a new CNE to reduce the margin of institutional irregularity that plagued this process.”
“The burden of injustice on the people of Venezuela continues. These people are once again victims of repression, without a doubt the most relevant governmental characteristic, the result of inefficient management that has sown the most serious humanitarian and migratory crises that the region has ever known,” he stressed.
The facts that, according to the OAS, make it impossible to grant democratic recognition to the election
The opacity of the CNE and its resistance to national and international observation,
The extreme inequity in the contest,
Intimidation and political persecution,
The suppression of candidacies,
Attacks on the press and the right to information,
The delay in the opening of polling stations and the disclosure of results,
The reluctance to allow opposition witnesses into voting tables and centres or to provide them with a copy of the counting report,
The suspension of the transmission of results from different voting centers,
The interruption of the CNE website service since Sunday night,
The announcement of an alleged hacking of the transmission system without providing any evidence and the contradiction between the announced percentages and the citizen verification exercises that were made public at the end of the counting, which also coincided with the sampling and exit polls that applied technical methodologies.
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