A quick ruling by the Judiciary, harshly questioned in its impartiality by different sectors, issued the political indictment of the opposition candidate. The projections had him as the winner of the gubernatorial race in Barinas, a traditional stronghold of Chavismo. Until a week after the vote, no one had contested the nomination. The Supreme Court is calling fresh elections and even set a date, a prerogative of the Electoral Power. The incident comes at a time when senior government officials criticize the electoral observation mission deployed by the European Union
Two rulings issued by the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) gave an unexpected turn to the regional and municipal elections of November 2021. The decisions cast a shadow over the electoral path, as they ignored the will of the voters in the Venezuelan western state of Barinas.
The comprehensive evaluation of an electoral process ends once the activities of the post-electoral stage are completed. In this case, the orders of the public power that exercises the contentious-electoral jurisdiction affect the efforts that had been made towards the restitution of the vote as a democratic instrument of change that led to the appointment of a more pluralistic board of directors at the National Council Electoral (CNE for its acronym in Spanish), the strengthening of the audits, a more extensive update of the Electoral Registry, the authorization of some party cards, and a more pluralistic electoral observation.
This is our account of the facts:
- The first results
When the CNE issued the first results late in the night of November 21, it announced that the candidates from the ruling party were the projected winners of the state government in Apure and Barinas. However, as CNE rector Pedro Calzadilla warned that same night, there was still electoral data awaiting transmission to the counting center. At that moment, 90% of the votes had been counted.
The second bulletin released by the CNE in the afternoon of Monday 22 after 99% of the votes had been transmitted, kept the official results for Apure and Barinas in suspense. Later, the website of the Electoral power showed that the candidate of the ruling party, Eduardo Piñate, had ultimately won the election in Apure. This was not the case for Barinas.
2. A decision that never took place
The delay of over a week in the announcement of a winner in Barinas and the Arismendi municipality of the same state became a matter of controversy in public opinion.
On Friday, November 26, the CNE authorized the national electoral board to go on with the count of the few remaining votes. It became known that the votes of three polling stations in the Arismendi municipality were kept by a military contingent of the Plan República, which delayed their transfer to Caracas for further processing.
The National Electoral Council argued that “the unanimous decision was made after evaluating the complex conditions of remote places where the remaining votes belonged to and the deadlines established by law”.
The vice president of the CNE, Enrique Márquez, described the delay in counting the remaining votes as unjustifiable.
On Sunday, November 28, the national electoral board appointed an ad hoc commission to count the remaining votes, which were received that same day according to reports. The commission was scheduled to start the count of the votes on Monday 29. The country took it for granted that the winners would eventually be announced on Monday, bringing the incident to an end.
3. The first ruling
On November 29, ruling No 78 by the Electoral Chamber admitted an action of constitutional protection with a request for a precautionary measure filed by Adolfo Superlano. Mr Adolfo Superlano was a candidate for governor of Barinas in the Nov 21 elections on behalf of the MIN-Unidad, Movimiento Republicano and Movimiento Ecológico parties, as stated in CNE records. A representative of Barinas at the National Assembly during the 2015-2020 period, he supported the election of the questioned politician Luis Parra as president of the Parliament in January 2020. According to the press, Adolfo Superlano has been sanctioned by the United States.
Adolfo Superlano denounced before the Supreme Court the “alleged violation of the constitutional rights to participation and suffrage, derived from the climate of tension between political factions in the state of Barinas, as well as the handover of the final count to the National Electoral Board by the Regional Board”.
The plaintiff also explained the “alleged existence of administrative and criminal procedures and inquiries” against fellow candidate Freddy Superlano, “which are filed before the competent organs of the State.”
The claim cited resolution No. 01-00-000334, dated August 17, 2021, issued by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, that resolved to interdict Mr. Freddy Superlano from the exercise of any public office. Freddy Superlano ran for governor of Barinas in the November 21 elections on behalf of the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Roundtable) and disputed the state government with Argenis Chavez, who was running for re-election.
The registry of postulations was open until September 4. On September 3, Freddy Superlano declared in an interview that he had been authorized to run because he had received a presidential pardon on September 2 that allowed the registration process before the CNE to be completed without any problem.
There are many examples of double standards in the admission of the applications of opposition politicians under interdiction. The CNE nomination system allowed the application of Freddy Superlano but rejected others such as Daniel Ceballos, in the state of Táchira, and Richard Mardo, in the state of Aragua. In Caracas, the dissident from the ruling party, Eduardo Saman, reportedly registered his application on August 9 on behalf of Venezuela’s Communist Party but the CNE waited until September 5 to notify him of his interdiction.
Thus, in a ruling issued in the afternoon of Monday, November 29, the Supreme Court ordered the CNE to “immediately suspend all procedures and/or processes of totalization, adjudication, and proclamation related to the elections in the state of Barinas “until the merits of the matter are decided.”
The National Electoral Board immediately suspended the proceedings to comply with the precautionary measure. The Supreme Court did not announce how long it would take to decide the merits of the matter.
4. The second ruling
Also on Monday, November 29, Ruling No. 79 of the Electoral Chamber:
4.1. Admitted the aforementioned action for constitutional protection with a request for precautionary measure, based on the Resolution of August 17, 2021, issued by the Comptroller General of the Republic, through which it resolved to ban Freddy Superlano from the exercise of public office.
Following article 65 of the National Law on Electoral Processes, the timetable for the November elections included a period to present appeals against the admission of applications, which ended on September 9. The registration and admission of Freddy Superlano’s nomination was a public act. However, no actor in the state of Barinas exercised the right to appeal the nomination during the period indicated by law.
Even in the absence of judicial action, some political actors had denounced that the nominations system rejected their applications long after having admitted them, even one week before the elections. The list of candidates of the National Electoral Council still shows a red circle with an exclamation point next to the names of some candidates and a message that reads “Status: rejected due to interdiction”. This is the case of Guillermo Bernáez (Cajigal, Anzoátegui), José Noguera (Guanta, Anzoátegui), Carmen Saravia (Brión, Miranda), and Wilfredo Rivero (Cruz S. Acosta, Sucre), all of them members of Venezuela’s Communist Party. However, this was not the case with Mr. Freddy Superlano.
In a November 30 statement, the senior rector of the CNE Roberto Picón explained that Freddy Superlano’s political interdiction was unknown to the Electoral power at the time of his nomination.
Also, Freddy Superlano was one of the 110 political opponents to whom Nicolás Maduro granted a pardon through a Presidential Decree in August 2020. That was fifteen months ago. The measure brought an end to the cases against them.
4.2. Annulled all the procedures and acts celebrated under the Electoral timetable for the election of the position of governor in the state of Barinas, including the phase of reception of nominations, to guarantee the collective rights of the citizens of the state.
In consequence, an ad hoc electoral timetable is expected, starting by the phase of nomination, which was the 39th step of a total of 94 that made up the 2021 election. The CNE now must reschedule more than 40 steps in a little more than a month, including the Christmas holidays in the public administration.
Neither the current state governor Argenis Chávez nor the opposition candidate Freddy Superlano will be able to run in the new elections. The first of them declined the nominations while the second was prevented from doing it by judicial means after having won. Is there time for the government and opposition to agree on new candidates with the necessary leadership skills that the situation requires? Which candidates will compete or abstain in this new election? What will the voters decide?
According to a CNE bulletin issued on November 29, abstention in the state of Barinas stood at 54% in the regional elections, three percentage points below the national average.
4.3. Ordered the celebration of new elections in Barinas for the position of governor, “to guarantee the right to active and passive participation of those who attended the electoral event,” it argued.
The Supreme Court recognized that, even though the “projections set forth by the CNE” -as they call them- gave a lead to candidate Freddy Superlano with 37.60% of the votes versus 37.21% obtained by Argenis Chávez, the “condition of ineligibility” of candidate Freddy Superlano “violates the principles of equality, equity, and transparency in the participation of candidates in the electoral offer, as well as the voter in the exercise of suffrage”.
Without mentioning the number of votes at least in the decision order, since the sentence has not yet been published in full at the end of this note, the Supreme Court recognized that Freddy Superlano won the election.
In his reaction statements on November 30, Freddy Superlano assured that the “Supreme Court is delegitimizing the National Electoral Council” and that the repetition of elections is “a constitutional coup” in Barinas. “When the National Electoral Board began to totalize and we were leading, a State power gave an order to another power to stop the count, but the votes had already been counted,” he said, quoted by Efecto Cocuyo.
4.4. Ordered the CNE to convene elections for governor in the state of Barinas for January 9, 2022.
Furthermore, the Electoral Chamber usurped the exclusive constitutional competencies of the Electoral Power by setting the date of the new election. Article 293 of the National Constitution establishes that the Electoral Power has the function of declaring the total or partial nullity of the elections and organizing all acts related to them.
In the case of the snap election for governor of the state of Zulia, held in December 2017 after the opposition candidate refused to take oath before the questioned National Constituent Assembly, the date of the vote was decided by the CNE board of directors. In 2014, as a consequence of the sentencing and dismissal by the Supreme Court of acting opposition mayors in San Cristóbal and San Diego, the CNE board of directors also decided the date of both snap elections.
Without any protest, the CNE agreed on November 30 to call for the election of governor in the state of Barinas. Along with the call, the electoral timetable for the event was also approved and published on December 1. The timetable contemplates:
- A period of nominations from December 2 to 6. These nominees will be shown on the electoral card at polling stations on election day.
- A period for modifications and substitutions of nominations from December 18 to 30. These changes will not reflect on the electoral card at polling stations on election day.
- A period for campaigning from December 22 to January 6, 2022.
- Four rounds of audits to the voting machine configuration files, the production of voting machines; the zeroing of the national totalization centers, and the telecommunications capacity.
5. The context
“Especially the lack of judicial independence and the non-adherence to the rule of law unfavorably affected the level playing field and the fairness and transparency of the elections,” stated the European Union Electoral Observation Mission (EU-MOE) in a preliminary statement issued on November 23.
The document is titled “A return to the electoral arena by most political forces with improved electoral conditions though structural shortcomings remain.” After 15 years without an electoral mission to Venezuela, EU observers visited 665 voting centers in the 23 states of the country and the Capital District.
On November 28, President Nicolás Maduro declared that the European Union’s observation mission sought to “tarnish and alter Venezuela’s electoral and democratic system.” He pointed out that “the European Union spy delegation did not find elements to criticize the electoral system (…). These were not international observers, they were free to travel across the country and spy on our social, economic, and political life ”. He also pointed out that “what we saw of the European Union had never been seen in the last 22 years with other observation missions.”
In a letter dated November 30, the European Union indicated that despite Maduro’s remarks, the reception of the mission by a large majority of Venezuelans on the ground and the positive response to the preliminary statement suggests that the decision to send a mission was the correct one. It “was useful for the Venezuelan people and allows the EU and the international community to better assess the facts in the country.”
How to organize free and fair elections is indeed one of the key issues for any politically negotiated solution to the Venezuelan crisis, said the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, in the document.
The Venezuelan Observatory on Elections considers that the observation of electoral processes in their impartial, responsible, and independent exercise is a common practice in every electoral event in the world, and aims at identifying and preventing errors, distortions, and manipulations that may affect the nature and results of the elections. Under the rule of law and the respect for human rights, electoral observation must also be respected as it is enshrined in international declarations and national legislation, and because it allows both the electoral body and citizens to obtain expert, pluralistic and independent insight into the electoral processes for the well-being of a nation’s democracy.
Barinas: A Chavista stronghold for 23 years
The ongoing controversy is taking place in Barinas, a traditional Chavista stronghold since 1998. That year, Hugo de Los Reyes Chávez won the November regional election with 43% of the votes, a month before his son Hugo Chávez won the Presidency of the Republic for the first time.
Hugo de Los Reyes Chávez was reelected with 52% of the votes in the 2000 general elections and once again in 2004 with 76% of the votes for a third term that ended in 2008. He was succeeded by his son Adán Chávez, who won the state government with 50% of the votes and was reelected in 2012 with 57%. Months before the end of his four-year term, he was appointed minister. Two governors in charge completed the term: Zenaida Gallardo (from January to June 2017) and Argenis Chávez (from June until the elections).
Argenis Chávez won the 2017 regional elections with 53% of the votes (nine percentage points above Freddy Superlano, also a candidate in that contest). In summary, Hugo Chávez’s father and two of his brothers have been the only elected governors in Barinas since the advent of the Chavista era in 1998, making Chávez’s home state an important symbolic stronghold of chavismo.
On November 30, Argenis Chávez announced his resignation from office and left in the hands of the national bureau of the ruling party the appointment of a new candidate for the January election. He argued that preserving political power is more important than personal aspirations. “If we look at the recent numbers of Chavismo (…), we can see that fewer people voted for us in November than in our primary elections, when we were expecting the opposite. This reflects that the rifts in our internal process impacted on the result, ”said Chávez, quoted by Crónica Uno.
Translated by Jose Rafael Medina
