It is not a question of pretending to be impartial or playing the role of a tightrope walker, but the political conflict has escalated, in the electoral field, to incredible levels and, obviously, it arouses astonishing boredom. The 2020 parliamentary election, which will take place on December 6, takes us back to a situation similar to the one we lived in 2005. Not only because of the abstention of the opposition forces but also because of the unfairness and the repeated violations of the Constitution by institutions such as the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) and the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Perhaps the opposition should have insisted and fought for better electoral conditions, but it did not. On the other hand, it undervalued the efforts of Josep Borrell – the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – and focused on a consultation that points to the continuity of the current directive board chaired by Juan Guaidó with two questions of confusing wording. We spoke this time to Luis Lander, director at the Venezuelan Observatory on Elections.
In 2015, there was an improper use of public resources in the parliamentary elections. The CNE was neither impartial nor rigorous in applying the rules. However, we all know the results. From that year on, we have seen a continuous and profound deterioration of the Venezuelan electoral system. Could you mention the key points of that process?
You have to put things in context. Since the ruling party came to power (1998), efforts have been made to automate the Venezuelan electoral system. You will remember Indra, the Spanish company that was initially linked to this process but failed to deliver, among other things, because it did not make the software for the machines available to the public. The argument was that it was part of their intellectual property. That made the CNE scrap that company and end up “marrying” Smartmatic. That marriage lasted until 2017. During all these years, the ruling party made use of public resources – radio and TV stations, buses, among other things – to favor its candidates, which gave them an advantage over other political options. But it must be said that on election day, with that automated system, the votes were well counted. We did have complaints of fraud in previous processes, but they were never proven. Something similar is happening with Trump today. He claims that his election was stolen, but does not provide evidence. I insist, there were unfairness and misuse of public resources not only in 2015, but in previous processes (including the presidential and regional elections), but all of them had been favorable to the ruling party. The ruling party felt comfortable having the votes counted with an automated system. But that situation was turned upside down in 2015, after the results we all know.
According to you, Venezuela built an automated system that allowed “the votes to be well counted.” So, the only thing we have to reproach the ruling party is the unfairness and the improper use of public resources in favor of its candidates?
It is not a minor reproach, and it is not “the only thing”. The fact that a government, in an electoral campaign, uses public resources in an absolutely abusive way to support its candidates is not a minor thing. And it should be absolutely unacceptable. You have the case of the 2004 referendum when the polls showed that the government was going to lose. Then, Chávez began to aggressively develop social programs (particularly Barrio Adentro) that had a very strong impact. When the ruling party identified that the approval ratings had picked up thanks to that public policy, it allowed the referendum to take place and obtained the results it was expecting. The use of public policies for electoral gains is very reprehensible. This does not mean that it can be recognized that the result that was announced that day was obtained on the voting day. I repeat, saying that public resources have been misused, all these years, is no small matter. It is a major issue. Obviously, these are not balanced, fair, and entirely legitimate elections, precisely because public resources are directed towards a single fraction of society – the one that sympathizes with the Government – when they should be for everyone.
Aren’t we talking of fraud?
If you speak of fraud, in the strictest sense of the word, one always thinks that it refers to a numerical alteration of the electoral results, that people voted in one way and the results were added in another way. That, indeed, occurred in the regional elections, when Andrés Velázquez was stripped of an electoral victory in Bolívar, despite having the voting records that showed the numbers had been altered. That was a major fraud that should have been prosecuted.
Besides the fraud you mentioned, we have the arbitrary provisions of the CNE, the alteration of the constitutional tenure of municipal authorities, and the notorious reduction of the deadlines for updating the Permanent Electoral Registry, for example. What are we talking about?
Not only that, the ruling party has ignored electoral results when they do not favor its candidates and proceeds to appoint a “protector”, who takes away resources and powers from opposition governors. It has also been done in counties. In the Tovar Municipality of Aragua State, a candidate from the opposition won the election. What did the ruling party do next? It appointed a “protector”. Even worse, in December 2015, a lawsuit from the ruling party was filed in the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice claiming fraud in the election of three congressmen in Amazonas and one indigenous representative from the southern constituency (Apure-Amazonas). The Electoral Chamber decided to reverse the proclamation of the elected members and left Amazonas state without representation in the National Assembly (AN).
That is history.
Yes, it is part of the history of the institutional destruction of the country.
Besides the decisions of the Executive branch, such as the appointment of protectors, I would like to focus on the electoral issue. Laws and provisions on this matter have been violated systematically after 2015, especially by the CNE. Could you mention some of the violations that continue to deteriorate the electoral system?
Once the ruling party was defeated in the 2015 parliamentary elections, the opposition forces, through a somewhat bumpy procedure, ended up promoting the idea of the presidential recall referendum, which is contemplated in the Constitution. In that regard, the CNE made an interpretation (of the rules) that was quite twisted. The Constitution establishes that a certain number of signatures must be collected on a national scale, among other things, because the president is elected in the national circuit. The CNE decided that the signatures had to be collected state by state. Ultimately, the signatures were collected, but the process came to an end when criminal courts, without any jurisdiction on electoral matters, decided, almost simultaneously and through very similar rulings – almost a copy-paste – that fraud had been committed in the process, leading to CNE to state that the signatures had been collected in an invalid way and, therefore, it was not possible to organize the recall referendum. This example is worth keeping in mind because it is a clear manifestation of how the current justice system – stripped of any autonomy or capacity to settle the conflicts of society – enters the national political game by issuing rulings that limit the right to vote in Venezuela. The same happens when the courts, for example, decide who is the secretary-general of a political party, whose appointment corresponds exclusively to the members of the organization.
Yes, it is the judicialization of politics, to gradually add new arbitrariness and violations of the law. The curious thing is how a political party is banned and then that decision is reversed, among other things, because it has “new authorities” willing to bow to the CNE’s designs. What is your assessment of this approach?
That is a clear attack on the right to free suffrage. Not only because that right implies that people can choose, freely and without coercion, the candidates of their choice, but also because it prevents the citizens who consider having the attributes to be eligible from running. The functioning of political parties is altered and curtailed. Something that should be clear is that the ruling party not only uses this tactic against opposition parties, in moves that make front-page headlines in the media. Let us remember, for example, that a few years ago it took over the government-leaning MEP when the party was discussing whether or not it was part of the Gran Polo Patriótico (The pro-government coalition). There was a judicial decision in favor of those who wanted to participate in the electoral platform. Something similar happened with Podemos at another time. It has happened recently with the PPT and with Tupamaros, all of them sympathetic to the ruling party. Someone said that a pro-government “partisan ecosystem” was being formed. And, of course, the Acción Democrática card will appear in the ballot paper and a lot of voters throughout the country will believe that it is indeed the organization chaired by Ramos Allup, rather than Bernabé Gutiérrez. And something similar is going to happen with the other parties. It is an electoral situation of capital relevance.
In 2017, Smartmatic representatives made a complaint – about more than one million votes added by the CNE – that was never investigated. As a result, the CNE decided to terminate its relationship with that company. Later, a fire took place in the Fila de Mariches warehouse, and now we have brand new machines. Can we really trust electronic voting in Venezuela? Next December 6, to use your words, are the votes going to be well counted?
If the CNE, indeed, had the will and the courage to ensure that Venezuelans trust (in this new automated electoral system), it would have had to do a lot of things that it has not done so far, things that are not minor and that generate mistrust among voters. For the acquisition of the new machines, for example, given the amount of the investment, there was never a public tender, despite the Venezuelan legislation providing for it. That means the contracts bypassed the processes of transparency and legitimacy. Nor is it known for sure who is the supplier of these machines. The alternate CNE director, Mr. Quintero, has said that the body has learned a lot and has been able to develop the software for these machines. I think there are reasons to cast doubt on this statement, among other things, because the audits that were carried out were not of the same quality as those that were conducted in previous years. Recently, a simulation was carried out and a number of machines reported malfunction during the process. In that simulation, all the machines, all – I want to insist -, had to function properly. And in the transmission of the audits, they did not show the screens, which is the audit itself. We only got to see the faces of the people who were in the room, the auditors. So, it was not, properly speaking, a public act.
Let me ask you the question in more personal terms: Does Luis Lander believe that next December 6 “the votes will be well counted”?
This is a complicated question because many of these things are neither black nor white, but given the development of the current events, I would dare to believe they will. And I say this because the entire process has had the consequence that the majority of the people willing to vote against the Government have decided not to participate in the election. So, if most of the voters who are going to participate support the government, it is obvious to anticipate the result. Votes can be well counted and there is no problem with that. Furthermore, it is convenient because it will help the Government to say: this election was held, the votes were well counted, it is a legitimate process and the results must be recognized by all Venezuelans and by the international community that, in short, it is what interests the Government the most.
Isn’t it a bit contradictory? You spoke of the CNE software, the dubious quality of the audits and now you say that the votes are going to be well counted.
This is because we are in a situation that ends up being similar to the parliamentary election of 2005. That year, most of the opposition forces called not to participate. They did not nominate candidates. Ultimately, what happened? The ruling party went out to vote and voted for its candidates. A similar thing can happen this time. Do you mean that they are a clean, legitimate election? No, they are elections filled with irregularities.
Yes, they look similar, but only because both were celebrated on December 6.
Yes, but this time there are many more irregularities than in 2005. Without a doubt.
We have seen the electoral schedule being violated regarding the provisions of the law and the Constitution. Some leaders and factors of the international community asked the Government to postpone this election. Government officials and the ruling party said no, because “that would be violating the Constitution.” So, whenever the date for elections was changed, say, on other occasions, was the Constitution violated?
You ask me?
Of course.
Of course, We seem to be in a circus of insanity. More than the dates and the schedule, which are still important, there have been more flagrant violations in these elections. The appointment of the CNE board of directors, for example. This time, the TSJ does it again, but it includes something that it had not done before and that also violates the Constitution: Directly appointing the president and the vice president of the electoral authority. That is, it made the distribution of internal positions within the CNE despite the legislation clearly establishing that once the board is appointed, its members will make the corresponding distribution of positions. Also, the Supreme Tribunal granted the CNE legislative powers that are the exclusive competence of the National Assembly. The CNE usurps functions of the AN when it modifies, for example, the regulations for the election of indigenous representatives. Furthermore, modifying the number of deputies to be elected, which now stands at 277, was a truly appalling thing.
There is also the consultation called by the National Assembly. What would you say about that initiative?
Yes, we are going to witness two elections. But if one applies the same rigor of critical analysis to the consultation promoted by the AN, they fail the test. The organizing committee, for example, is far from impartial. It is completely biased. The two questions asked should be easy to answer, yes or no. But each of them consults more than one single issue. Let us say, they are creating a political ground to ignore the results of December 6, even though the opposition factors maintain that the consultation has constitutional status. In this way, a path is created to allow for the continuity of the current AN. So, we will see a situation similar to that of 2017, when there was a popular consultation and a National Constituent Assembly, and what mattered, ultimately, is which of the two -in separate elections- got more votes.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
