(Miami Herald, 16.Jun.2023) — It’s official: The Venezuelan regime will pick a new electoral tribunal to oversee the 2024 presidential elections, and — guess what! — its members will be effectively picked by none other than dictator Nicolás Maduro’s wife.
The dictatorship apparently decided to rig next year’s elections ahead of time by installing an even-more loyalist pro-Maduro election council than the previous one.
The government-installed National Assembly announced on June 15 that it will replace the current National Electoral Council (CNE) with one that will be selected by a legislative committee — also picked by the government — that includes Cilia Flores, the president’s wife. She will be the undisputed No. 1 on that committee, opposition leaders say.
That means that Maduro, who already re-elected himself fraudulently in 2018, will run for a third term next year in an election that will be overseen by a tribunal picked by his wife.
While the outgoing 15-member CNE had a majority of pro-government officials, it included two opposition members, which allowed it to claim some neutrality. Now, the government is expected to appoint more hard-line pro-Maduro members — and perhaps a tiny minority of bogus oppositionists.
The government’s decision to replace the CNE came two weeks after the opposition asked the electoral tribunal to provide technical assistance for its primary elections in October. The opposition needs the CNE’s infrastructure, including voting places and voting machines, to carry out its primaries and elect a unity candidate to face Maduro in 2024.
Venezuelan opposition activists in Caracas tell me that the Maduro regime has rushed to appoint a “CNE espanta-votos,” or a vote-scaring CNE, to discourage people from voting in the opposition’s primaries.
Following several rigged elections in recent years, many Venezuelans are convinced that the Maduro dictatorship will never allow an opposition victory. Maduro wants to encourage that narrative and to push his critics to stay at home during the opposition primaries. He wants them to believe that voting with such a biased CNE would be a waste of time.
Diosdado Cabello, the vice-president of Maduro’s party, openly pushed that idea when he said on June 13 that the opposition “will never again govern this country, no matter how” it tries to come to power.
By appointing an even more pro-government CNE than the outgoing one, Maduro wants to ensure that body’s absolute loyalty to him. In addition, Maduro wants to ignite further tensions within the opposition and deny it the means to conduct a fair primary.
Opposition leaders have been debating whether to seek CNE help for their primaries or to hold them independently.
Juan Guaidó, the recently exiled opposition leader, told me in an interview that Maduro decided to replace the CNE now “in order to make it more difficult for the opposition to hold a primary election. It’s obviously not in the dictatorship’s interest to have a united opposition, so they are seeking every possible way to sabotage it.” Right to the Point Right to the Point connects you with center-right and conservative perspectives. Stay connected to opinion journalists who give voice to your points of view.
Asked whether the opposition can hold its primary elections without CNE assistance, Guaidó told me that, “It’s doable, but difficult.” He added, “We will have to do a 100% self-organized primary. Otherwise, if the CNE pulls out two months from now, we won’t be able to organize it in time.”
Maduro put his wife on the CNE selection commission because he wants to have an even tighter control, Guaidó told me. Flores “will be the leading voice in that commission, no matter who they put as its nominal president,” he added.
The regime’s latest move to replace the CNE puts Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro in an awkward position. They have both recently thrown olive branches to the Maduro regime, while claiming to seek a deal for better conditions for Venezuela’s 2024 elections.
Lula went to the extreme recently, saying that human rights groups’ charges that Maduro is responsible for thousands of political assassinations and other crimes are “a narrative that has been constructed against Venezuela.”
I wonder what Lula and Petro will say now about Maduro’s planned 2024 electoral fraud. Will they continue to turn a blind eye to the dictator’s scheme now that — in addition to forcing top opposition leaders into exile, holding political prisoners and allowing no freedom of the press — Maduro has appointed his own wife to select a new CNE?
That’s no narrative — it’s been announced by Maduro’s regime itself.
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By Andres Oppenheimer
