Maduro’s dirty tricks to rig Venezuela’s elections

Andres Oppenheimer: Maduro's dirty tricks to rig Venezuela's elections

It's no secret that Venezuela is a cosmetic democracy in which President
Nicolás Maduro resorts to all kinds of dirty tricks to retain absolute
powers, but his latest move — designing ballot sheets designed to
confuse opposition voters — would be almost amusing if it weren't so
devious.

Earlier this week, Venezuela's government-controlled National Electoral
Commission released the ballot sheets for the crucial Dec. 6 legislative
elections, which place the opposition's "Unidad" (Unity) coalition, best
known by its MUD acronym, next to two other non-related parties that —
surprise, surprise — are also named "Unidad."

"It's another government trick," MUD secretary general Jesus "Chúo"
Torrealba told me in a telephone interview. "The government has invented
and financed micro-parties that are posing as opposition parties and use
the same name, but in reality are government satellite parties created
to confuse voters."

Indeed, the ballot sheet's three "Unidad" boxes are next to each other.
While the first "Unidad" box at the bottom left of the ballot sheet
corresponds to the real MUD opposition coalition, the other two are
respectively named "Min-Unidad" and "UnidadDR" and look very similar.

But that's only the latest of the Maduro regime's ploys to rig the
election process, and perhaps even induce a "self-coup" to suspend the
elections, opposition leaders say. Consider these seven other government
moves in recent weeks:

▪ The Maduro regime has declared a "state of exception" in 10 towns of
Táchira state along the Colombian border, amid an escalating diplomatic
conflict with Colombia. The diplomatic spat began after Maduro closed
the border and deported thousands of Colombians living on the Venezuelan
side of the frontier, claiming that a Colombian criminal group had
attacked Venezuelan soldiers.

Much like in a separate Venezuelan spat with Guyana, many oppositionists
suspect that Maduro is creating border conflicts as an excuse to either
cancel the December elections, or declare a wider "state of exception"
to prevent opposition meetings in large parts of the country.

▪ At least 10 opposition leaders, including prominent former
congresswoman Maria Corina Machado, who was stripped of her
congressional seat by government-controlled electoral authorities, have
been banned from running for congressional seats in the Dec. 6 elections
under dubious legal charges.

▪ One of Venezuela's most charismatic opposition leaders, Leopoldo
López, has been held in a high-security jail for the past 18 months
under flimsy government charges that he "instigated" violent opposition
protests on Feb. 12, 2014. López is one of at least 40 high-profile
political prisoners in Venezuela who have been jailed in an effort to
silence them, human rights groups say.

▪ Maduro has said he will not accept international electoral observers
from the 34-country Organization of American States, as the Venezuelan
opposition is requesting. Instead, the Maduro regime has said it will
only allow foreign "electoral escorts" from the Union of South American
countries, UNASUR, an organization that has been supportive of the
Venezuelan government.

▪ As in previous elections, Maduro is virtually controlling television
time with mandatory broadcasts of presidential speeches and an avalanche
of state-paid pro-government ads. The regime, which in recent years took
over RCTV and other electronic media, is now trying to close the
independent daily El Nacional through a tax investigation, El Nacional
editor Miguel Henrique Otero said Wednesday, denouncing the move.

▪ Government-controlled electoral authorities have, as in previous
elections, designed electoral districts so as to give pro-government
states greater representation than opposition states. In the 2010
legislative elections, official results showed that the government PSUV
party virtually tied with the MUD coalition, but the PSUV won 96 seats
in the National Assembly, whereas the opposition won only 65 seats.

▪ Maduro is intimidating voters by virtually threatening a civil war if
the opposition wins in December. On June 22, Maduro said that there
would be "chaos," and that "I will be the first one to take to the
streets if the right [wing] were to take the National Assembly."

My opinion: The Maduro government is becoming desperate, and with a 180
percent annual inflation rate and the economy expected to collapse by
nearly 7 percent this year, is resorting to increasingly dirtier schemes
to steal the election.

There is no excuse for Latin American countries not to demand that
Venezuela allow OAS observers to make the election results credible. In
light of Maduro's latest dirty tricks, they should do so now, and say
that they would not accept a government victory otherwise.

Source: Andres Oppenheimer: Maduro's dirty tricks to rig Venezuela's
elections | Miami Herald -
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