The U.S. State Department recently released a statement about Venezuela's election, calling the process “grossly skewed” in favor of incumbent Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuelans were denied a free and fair election, the State Department said in a press release issued Nov. 22, adding that the ruling regime had already implemented a “process to determine the result of this election long before any ballots had been cast.”
“Arbitrary arrests and harassment of political and civil society actors, criminalization of opposition parties' activities, bans on candidates across the political spectrum, manipulation of voter registration rolls, persistent media censorship, and other authoritarian tactics all but quashed political pluralism and ensured the elections would not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people,” the release said.
The State Department did commend the nation's political parties, candidates and voters for participating in the process “despite its flaws to preserve and fight for much-needed democratic space,” the release said.
“But that space is limited by Maduro's efforts to divide and suppress Venezuela's democratic actors,” the State Department said. “By arbitrarily imprisoning reportedly more than 250 individuals on political grounds, denying Venezuelans their rights to freely express their opinions and choose their own leaders, and restricting Venezuelans’ access to accurate information, Maduro robs Venezuelans of their chance to shape their own future.”
The State Department called on Maduro and his supporters “to cease its repression and allow Venezuelans to live in the peaceful, stable, and democratic country they deserve and have long sought.”
The State Department also promised it would continue to “press for the release of all those unjustly detained for political reasons, the independence of political parties, respect for freedom of expression and other universal human rights, and an end to human rights abuses.”
Not all U.S.-based observers of the election agreed with the State Department's assessment. A delegation from the National Lawyers Guild, headquartered in New York, reported the election was “fundamentally transparent” in the provinces within Miranda and La Guaira states they visited. The election was “facilitated by a workforce” of poll workers, coordinators and table presidents who showed “strong technical competence regarding the functioning of the machines and the integrated election systems,” the guild said in its assessment issued Monday, Nov. 22.
The guild said it rejected the state department's “false characterization” that Venezuelans were denied their right to a free and fair electoral process.
“The U.S.'s consistently false narrative of elections in Venezuela is formulated to legitimize the continuation of U.S. sanctions, which are violations of international law and amount to economic warfare,” guild President and one of its delegates, Suzanne Adely, said in the assessment. “The U.S. sanctions harm the Venezuelan people and aim to undermine and destabilize Venezuela in order to further U.S. interests in the region.”
