In a development that has a strangely familiar ring to it, Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González claims to have proof that the South American nation’s recent election was not on the up-and-up and that González, not the socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro, actually won the election.
As thousands of people demonstrated across Venezuela, opposition candidate Edmundo González announced Monday that his campaign has the proof it needs to show he won the country’s disputed election in which electoral authorities named President Nicolás Maduro the victor.
González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told reporters they have obtained more than 70% of tally sheets from Sunday’s election, and they show González with more than double Maduro’s votes. Both called on people, some of whom protested in the hours after Maduro was declared winner, to remain calm and invited them to gather peacefully at 11 a.m. Tuesday to celebrate the results.
“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said as dozens of supporters cheered outside campaign headquarters in the capital, Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”
There have been widespread demonstrations throughout Venezuela since the election results were announced. They have been “mostly peaceful,” although it is as yet unclear as to whether they will become “fiery.”
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The conflict, as is so often the case in election disputes, seems to have to do not so much with who cast the votes but who counts them, and Maduro has a tight grip on the people who run that system.
But the ruling party wields tight control over the voting system, both through a loyal five-member electoral council and a network of longtime local party coordinators who get near unrestricted access to voting centers. Those coordinators, some of whom are responsible for handing out government benefits including subsidized food, have blocked representatives of opposition parties from entering voting centers as allowed by law to witness the voting process, vote counting and, crucially, to obtain a copy of the machines’ final tally sheet.
Electoral authorities had not yet released the tally sheets for each of the 30,000 voting machines as of Monday evening. The electoral body’s website was down, and it remained unclear when the tallies would be available. The lack of tallies prompted an independent group of electoral observers and the European Union to publicly urge the entity to release them.
Venezuela should, by any measure, be a wealthy nation. They have some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves and, until the socialist Maduro came into the presidency of Venezuela, an office he shows no inclination to give up willingly, it was a prosperous nation with a modern economy and a good standard of living. But the election of a socialist leader, as is so often the case, did away with Venezuela’s prosperity.
Earlier this week, the United States expressed “serious concerns” about the integrity of this election.
The moral of this story, at least for now, would seem to be this: Socialists, given power, can be relied upon utterly to do two things: 1) Ruin a nation’s economy and 2) Never give up power.
