One of the five main directors of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE), Juan Carlos Delpino Boscán, has denounced this Monday in a statement the “lack of transparency and veracity” of the official results of the presidential elections of last July 28 that gave the victory to President Nicolás Maduro despite the accusations of fraud by the opposition.
“Everything that happened before, during and after the presidential election, points to the seriousness of the lack of transparency and veracity of the announced results,” Delpino has pointed out in a statement picked up by the Venezuelan press. “I lack the evidence that supports the announced results,” he has stressed.
“I deeply regret that the result and its recognition are not useful to all Venezuelans, that it does not resolve our differences and does not promote national unity and that instead there is doubt in the majority of Venezuelans and in the international community about the results,” he added.
Delpino believes that “the process took place with relatively few incidents.” However, after the closing of the voting tables “a breach of essential rules and regulations was evident when incidents of eviction of opposition witnesses were reported during the closing of the tables, which constituted a direct violation of the principles of equity and non-observance of the rights of voters to have access to the voting records, compromising the legitimacy of the process in those voting centers.”
In addition, he highlights that according to the established protocols, “the transmission of results should be done immediately after the closing of the tables,” but “the transmission was interrupted (…) by an alleged hack, with silence and an unexplained delay.”
At 9:00 p.m. on the day of the elections, Delpino was informed of this alleged hacking, which reduced the transmission to 58 percent. “Given the removal of witnesses from quite a few centers, the lack of transmission of the QR code to the commands’ data centers, and the lack of an effective solution to the alleged hacking, I made the decision not to go up to the totaling room and not to attend the announcement of the first bulletin,” which declared Maduro the winner with 51 percent of the votes.
Delpino subsequently refused to attend the act of proclamation of Maduro as president-elect, on July 29, “maintaining my position in disagreement with the lack of transparency in the process.”
The rector also considers “the lack of timely publication of the results table by table (…) affecting the chain of trust of the audit and generating uncertainty” to be a warning.
Delpino also referred to Maduro’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), which has compared the minutes with the results of the electronic system and has confirmed Maduro’s victory in the elections.
“I believe that the resolution of the conflict should be done within the electoral body itself, calling on electoral technicians and experts to compare the minutes that the CNE has from the day of the election with those held by the different campaign commands and that they be audited by international observers and certified independently,” he argued in line with the opposition’s position.
Delpino has listed a series of other circumstances that would have also affected the elections prior to the date of the vote, such as the “worrying lack of meetings” of the CNE board “which prevented its effective functioning”, “the right to vote of Venezuelans abroad was discussed”, the process of registration of candidates with “lack of equity in the hours assigned to political organizations” or the veto on the participation of the Electoral Observation Mission of the European Union.
