(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
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
“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)
---------------------------------------------------------------
** Zie: 'VS heeft beslag gelegd op 5 miljard dollar van Venezuela voor medicijnaankopen' (30 maart 2019)
---------------------------------------------------------------
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)
'VS met commentaar op de verkiezingen in Venezuela, terwijl het verkiezingsproces in de VS door en door verrot is' (22 november 2021)
'Verkiezingen Nicaragua: één grote demonisering in de westerse media, vergelijk dat eens met verkiezingen in de VS' (9 november 2021)
'VS looft 25 miljoen dollar uit voor de gevangenneming of het doden van de Venezolaanse president Maduro' (2 april 2020) OVER TERREUR VAN DE VS GESPROKEN!!!
'Bolivia: de coup heeft alles te maken met grondstoffen' (17 december 2019) En zie de links in dat schrijven, o.a. naar meer berichten over fake news van de NOS!!
'Venezuela: onafhankelijke journalisten ontmaskeren leugens over dit land bij presentatie voor de VN' (!!!!) (28 maart 2019)
'VS legt nog meer sancties op aan de bevolking van Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua' (18 april 2019)
'VS coup in Nicaragua mislukt, een feit dat niet wordt gemeld door de reguliere media'
'VS zet Latijns-Amerikaanse landen tegen elkaar op en is bezig met voorbereiding invasie Venezuela'
'Guaidó wil 4 miljoen Venezolaanse paspoorten om o.a. een grote achterban voor hem te vormen'
'Republikeinse en Democratische senatoren proberen de verkiezingen in Venezuela te saboteren' (2 oktober 2020)
'Joe Biden als Gandalf de brenger van het licht.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'
'Trump verklaart de oorlog aan Venezuela, reguliere media doodstil'
'Bidens puppeteers verwijten Trump slap buitenlands optreden'
'VS op oorlogspad tegen Venezuela en Iran'
'Venezuela: terreurcomplot met de vingerafdrukken van Pompeo, Trump en de CIA'
'Mike Pompeo demoniseert Iran vanwege het zich niet houden aan de Iran-nucleaire deal... ha! ha! ha! ha'
'Coronavirus: VS sancties tegen andere landen zijn zeker nu met de Coronacrisis sadistisch en barbaars'
'Sancties van de VS zijn illegaal en zijn oorlogsmisdaden die moeten worden gestopt'
'Venezolaanse ambassade in Washington belaagd, er mag zelfs geen voedsel worden gebracht....'
'VS dreigt Rusland, China en Iran met geweld vanwege hulp aan Venezolaanse volk......'
'The Monroe Doctrine is Back, and as the Latest US Attack on Cuba Shows, Its Purpose is to Serve the Neoliberal Order' (een artikel van CounterPunch)
'Venezuela: in geheime zitting in Washington is gesproken over een militaire inval'
'Iran stelt terecht dat het VS leger een terroristische organisatie is' (met o.a. aandacht voor de VS terreur tegen Venezuela)
'Venezolaanse regering treft nieuwe regeling voor hulpgoederen van het Rode Kruis, 'onafhankelijk NOS' brengt alweer fake news'
'Venezuela: 15 doden door sabotage elektriciteitsnet'
'Venezuela: bijt de VS in haar eigen (slangen-) staart?'
'Venezuela: het VS volk wordt weer een oorlog in gelogen, zoals eerder in Irak, Libië en Syrië'
'Venezuela Aid Live >> Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) terecht tegen benefietconcert'
'Venezuela: humanitaire hulp stunt van de VS ingegeven om de kruistocht tegen Maduro een versnelling te geven'
'Jill Stein (US Green Party): de VS maakt zich druk over armoede in Venezuela terwijl de armen thuis kunnen doodvallen....'
'Venezuela: Abrams vindt een meerderheid in de VN Veiligheidsraad genoeg voor een gedwongen regeringswisseling'
'Venezuela: 4 belangrijke zaken aangaande humanitaire hulp waarover de reguliere media niet berichten'
'Venezuela zou humanitaire hulp weigeren, het echte verhaal ziet er 'iets anders' uit' (180 graden anders, wel te verstaan)
'VS huurlingen bezig met wapentransport gearresteerd in Haïti'
'Venezuela: VS bedrijf dat wapens smokkelde is gelinkt aan CIA 'Black Site' centra'
'Congreslid Ilhan Omar fileert het monster Elliot Abrams, de speciale gezant van de VS voor Venezuela'
'Venezuela >> de media willen het socialisme definitief de nek omdraaien'
'BBC World Service radio >> fake news and other lies about Venezuela' (bericht van dit blog)
'Joel Voordewind (CU 2de Kamer) bakt de 'Venezolaanse vluchtelingencrisis' op Curaçao wel erg bruin en van Ojik (GL 2de Kamer) schiet een Venezolaanse bok'
'Venezolaanse verandering van regime bekokstoofd door VS en massamedia'
'Guaidó is een ordinaire couppleger van de VS, e.e.a. gaat volledig in tegen de Venezolaanse constitutie'
'Venezuela >> regime change: 'de 12 stappen methode' die de VS gebruikt'
'Venezuela >> VS economische oorlogsvoering met gebruikmaking van o.a. IMF en Wereldbank'
'VS couppleger in Venezuela belooft VS Venezolaanse olie als hij de macht heeft overgenomen'
De foto waarin de volgende link stond is gecensureerd.....:
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onderdoet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen... ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging...)
'Halliburton en Chevron hebben groot belang bij 'regime change' in Venezuela'
'Mike Pence (vicepresident VS) gaf Guaidó, de door de VS gewenste leider, groen licht voor de coup in Venezuela'
'VS coup tegen Maduro in volle gang........'
'Antiwar Hero Medea Benjamin Disrupts Pompeo Speech on Venezuela'
'Venezuela’s Military Chief, Foreign Allies Back Maduro'
'Als de VS stopt met spelen van 'politieagent' en het vernielen van de wereld, zullen de slechte krachten winnen......'
'Venezuela: VS verandering van regime mislukt >> de Venezolanen wacht een VS invasie'
Ook de foto waarin de volgende link stond is gecensureerd.....:
'Venezolaanse verkiezingen door Maduro gewonnen, ondanks economische oorlogvoering VS'
'Trump wilde naast de economische oorlogsvoering tegen Venezuela dat land daadwerkelijk militair aanvallen......'
'Venezolaanse regionale verkiezingen gehekeld door westen, terwijl internationale waarnemers deze als eerlijk beoordeelden..........'
'Venezuela: Target of Economic Warfare'
'Venezuela: de anti-propaganda van John Oliver (en het grootste deel westerse massamedia) feilloos doorgeprikt'
'Venezuela: 'studentenprotest' wordt uitgevoerd door ingehuurde troepen.........'
'Abby Martin Busts Open Myths on Venezuela's Food Crisis: 'Shelves Fully Stocked'' (zie ook de video in dat artikel!)
'Rex Tillerson waarschuwt Venezuela voor een coup en beschuldigt China van imperialisme........ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'
'Edwin Koopman (VPRO Bureau Buitenland) over Venezolaanse verkiezingen met anti-Maduro propaganda bij de 'onafhankelijke NOS.....'
'EU neemt uiterst hypocriet sancties tegen de Venezolaanse regering Maduro.........'
'Venezuela ontwricht, wat de reguliere media u niet vertellen........'
'VS steunt rechtse coalitie (MUD) in Venezuela.........'
'Karabulut (SP) blij dat ze Maduro eindelijk ook kan schoppen.........'
'Venezuela moet en zal worden 'verlost' van Maduro, met 'oh wonder' een dikke rol van de VS en de reguliere westerse media'
'Venezolaanse regering treedt terecht op tegen de uiterst gewelddadige oppositie!!'
---------------------------------------------------------------
Let op!! De ruimte om reacties weer te geven werkt niet altijd. Als je commentaar hebt en het lukt niet op de normale manier, doe dit dan via het mailadres trippleu@gmail.com, ik zal deze dan opnemen onderaan in het bewuste artikel, althans als je geen geweld predikt, voorts plaats ik jouw reactie ook al staat deze diametraal tegenover dat bericht. Alvast mijn dank voor jouw eventuele reactie, Willem.
