Lies and Damned Lies About Venezuela's Presidential Elections

[Judi Lynn]

JULY 2, 2024

BY MARIA PAEZ VICTOR

There are continuous lies being said about Venezuela by media and politicians. As the next Venezuelan presidential elections draws near in late July there has been a plethora of unsubstantiated accusations of fraud, with nary any evidence.[1] Steve Ellner, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oriente, Venezuela, comments on the media barrage against Venezuela: “True to form, the corporate media has completely left key issues out of their reporting on Venezuela’s upcoming elections…The biggest violator of the very essence of democracy is not Maduro, but the U.S. Washington will penalize Venezuelans if they don’t elect the candidate it openly supports.”[2]

But such as been the case every time Venezuela has had elections since Hugo Chávez was elected in 1999, the media has willfully distorted the situations to favour Washington’s candidate. You can judge a cause by its enemies, and the host of global far right extremists have lined up to disparage the excellent electoral system of Venezuela. Perhaps the most grievous lie paraded lately is that “finally” Venezuelans will be able to vote – willfully ignoring that the coming election will be the 25th election process in twenty-four years of Bolivarian government. Venezuelans love to vote, and the voter turnout has always been significant.

So, on the 28th of July 2024, there will be presidential elections in Venezuela. All the presidential, municipal and regional elections in the country are carried out with a seamless, transparent and fair electoral system of which the ex-president of the United States, Jimmy Carter famously stated: “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” [3] The Carter Group is one of the International Observers for this coming election, along with UN Election Observers, among hundreds of other independent international observers.

Elections are the responsibility of the National Electoral Council, an independent state authority. They have five key safeguards for veracity, fairness and transparency:

+ Completely automated electronic voting, with machines that cannot be accessed by any outside computer;[4]

+ Paper voter verification of the electronic vote: in 2004 it became the first nation to add a paper trail to the electronic voting system

+ Voter ID with fingerprint of voter to verify the identify, not the voter’s choice.

+ Independent audits before the vote of the software and machines, during the voting and after the results are in

+ Hundreds of International Observers present at all elections

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/02/lies-and-damned-lies-about-venezuelas-presidential-elections/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Maria Machado, who has always received money from the US Congress for her "Democratic" organization,

started visiting George W. Bush, taxpayers' expense, during his pResidency.

From the article above:

[excerptCurrently, of the ten candidates running for president, nine are leaders of opposition parties. Nicolás Maduro, representing the Chavismo forces, is standing for re-election and the polls show he has a huge advantage (55.6%) over all other candidates.[5] The extremist section of the opposition is led by a well-known agent of Washington, Maria Corina Machado, a scion of two prominent families of the wealthy, privileged elite. In 2014 she was found guilty of malfeasance by the Venezuelan judiciary and disqualified from running for public office. Her disqualification was recently upheld by the Supreme Court.[6] Machado has been a consistent supporter of the economic sanctions against Venezuela and has repeatedly called for US foreign military intervention against her own country to oust President Maduro. Astonishingly, she has even written to Israeli leader Netanyahu asking him to militarily intervene in Venezuela to overthrow Maduro. [7] To say that she is one of the most despised figures of Venezuelan politics is an understatement. A full 72% of Venezuelans believe that she, and all the opposition leaders who have asked for US military intervention, should be indicted.[8]

Although Machado cannot be a candidate, she is running the campaign of one Edmundo González, a stand-in for her, and she campaigns as if she were the candidate. Machado and her ilk in the past presidential election (2018) advocated that people abstain from voting and was adamantly supportive of the violent street riots of 2014 and 2017 that caused many deaths, injuries and damages to property. One young man was burned alive because they considered his dark skin proof he was a Chavista. Many street dogs were also burnt alive for the fun of it, and thousands of urban trees were destroyed. Venezuela had never in its entire modern political life witnessed virulence. For his part, Gonzalez was recruited by the CIA and, as a member of the Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador, participated in the financing and logistics of death squads that tormented that nation during the 1980s.[9] Both Machado and González have blood-stained hands.