The flag of Venezuela flies over the Federal Legislative Palace in Caracas, Venezuela on August 15, 2024. | Photo credit: Reuters
Venezuela’s CNE electoral council, under fire after declaring a widely rejected election victory for President Nicolas Maduro, on Wednesday (14 August 2024) described a UN report disputing the outcome as “full of lies”.
The CNE declared Mr Maduro the winner with 52% of votes cast in a July 28 poll, without providing a detailed breakdown.
Maduro’s victory has been rejected by the opposition, the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries.
Anti-Maduro protests in Venezuela have so far claimed 25 lives, with dozens injured and more than 2,400 arrested.
A preliminary report published on Tuesday by a panel of UN election experts found that the CNE “failed to meet basic transparency and integrity measures”.
The CNE hit back on Wednesday, saying the UN report was “full of lies and contradictions” and that its insistence on a “cyber-terrorist attack” has prevented it from making public a full analysis of the results at polling station level after what it called an “impeccable and impeccable’ situation. transparent election process.”
The CNE website has been offline since Election Day.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also rejected the UN report.
Former opposition leader Enrique Marquez, who once ran against Maduro and was himself a member of the CNE, said on Wednesday that he would request the Public Prosecution Service to initiate a criminal investigation into his former colleagues in the Electoral Council.
Mexico emphasized that the solution to the Venezuelan post-election crisis can only be solved by Mexico.
“This is a matter that belongs to the Venezuelans, and what we want is for there to be a peaceful resolution to disputes, which has always been our foreign policy,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters.
He said he had no immediate plans to renew contact with his fellow left-wing leaders in Brazil and Colombia to discuss the crisis. He said he would wait for a ruling from Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which had asked Mr. Maduro to certify the election results.
‘Coupâ€
The opposition says its own results at polling station level showed that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old retired diplomat, won by a wide margin.
González Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who were barred from participating by Maduro-friendly state institutions, have gone into hiding after the president accused them of trying to instigate a “coup” and foment a “civil war.”
On Wednesday, Gonzalez Urrutia said the U.N. panel’s report and an earlier report from the U.S.-based Carter Center “confirm the lack of transparency in the announced results and confirm the veracity of” the published opposition ballots, “which our demonstrate indisputable victory. .”
A day earlier, the South American country’s national assembly began considering a package of laws to tighten regulations on non-governmental organizations – described by the regime as a “façade for the financing of terrorist actions.”
Other measures are aimed at increasing government surveillance of social media, which has been accused of promoting “hatred” and punishing “fascism” – a term Maduro often uses in relation to the opposition and other opponents.
The debate in the Unicameral Assembly will resume on Thursday.
Since coming to power in 2013, Mr Maduro has overseen an economic collapse that has sent more than seven million Venezuelans fleeing the country, while GDP has fallen 80% in a decade.
Maduro’s last election in 2018 was also rejected as a sham by dozens of countries.
