The authorities of Venezuela's National Electoral Council presiding at the ceremony where the signing of the anti-guarimbas agreements took place in Caracas on Thursday, June 20, 2024. Photo: Venezuela News.
The candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential elections, scheduled for July 28, have signed an agreement at the headquarters of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Caracas, stating that they will respect and recognize the electoral results issued that day by the electoral branch, and that they will reject and condemn any call for violence or refusal to recognise the results. The agreement was signed by all candidates, except for Enrique Márquez from the Centrados party and Edmundo González from the Unitary Platform party (PUD).
The agreement, made this Thursday, June 20, was announced by the president of the electoral branch, Elvis Amoroso, who stated that the candidates will:
- Act in compliance with the Constitution and electoral laws.
- Recognize the Electoral Power as the only legitimate authority for the July 28 elections.
- Recognize that the CNE has fulfilled electoral guarantees in all phases of the process, and will agree to the results issued by the CNE.
- Compete in a democratic peaceful process, without resorting to acts of violence or destabilization.
- Call for governments of the world to respect the sovereignty and self-determination of the country.
- Demand the lifting of the sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
- Affirm national sovereignty, governance, the full respect of human rights, cooperation in the face of the existing economic and social situation, and the constitutional rule of law and democracy, as well as the repudiation of violence as a political instrument.
- Reject and report any financing coming from illicit funds.
- Reiterate their responsibility with democracy and the absolute will to recognize results issued by the Electoral Power (CNE).
Este jueves, en la sede del Poder Electoral, los candidatos participantes en la Elección convocada para el 28 de julio, firmaron el Acuerdo de Reconocimiento de Resultados de la Elección Presidencial 2024. # CNE🇻🇪 #Democracia pic.twitter.com/gnhHflrCTj
— cneesvenezuela (@cneesvzla) June 20, 2024
The candidates came one by one during the ceremony and signed the document, done so by Luis Eduardo Martínez, Antonio Ecarri, Daniel Ceballos, Benjamín Rausseo, José Brito, Claudio Fermín, Javier Bertucci, and Nicolás Maduro. Edmundo González and Enrique Márquez were summoned to participate in the signing ceremony, but did not attend.
Maduro: “No to guarimbas!”
“No to violence, no to guarimbas!” President Maduro stated during his participation in the ceremony. “This agreement is an old-fashioned one, because there are those who like to use electoral processes to prepare for violence, to cry fraud. Today, with these signatures, we have said: we do not want violence, we respect the referees!” he explained, referring to the CNE as the referees of the electoral process. “If the referee calls you, you are obliged to go and listen to the referee. If you sign up for a competition, you have to respect the referee’s decisions. These are the basics of all competitions.”
Maduro pointed out that he celebrates the signing of the document, which is in line with the Barbados Agreement and the Caracas Dialogue Document detailing negotiations between the government and the far-right opposition. “Enough of sabotage against the country, enough of conspiracies. Venezuela wants peace of mind to continue its economic and social recovery. It deserves peace of mind to think about the future and to move forward.”
Edmundo González, the candidate for the Unity Platform (PUD) supported by María Corina Machado, issued a statement via social media stating that he will not sign the document, claiming that, in his opinion, the Barbados Agreement has been previously violated “by revoking the invitation for international observation from the European Union and increasing the persecution against leaders and sympathizers of our campaign.”
He further claimed that the agreement was supposedly “imposed unilaterally,” and that he is participating in a so-called “unequal campaign, and I am working to win it fair and square, I am not going to be pushed anywhere,” furthering Washington’s imperial narrative that Venezuelan elections are “undemocratic” since they don’t follow the US’s rules-based order.
Opposition candidates proposals
During the ceremony, the opposition candidate from the Alianza del Lapiz party, Antonio Ecarri, proposed to the CNE that all candidates should participate in an electoral debate, not only for the presidential elections but for any electoral contests in the country.
“What we want is for there to be a debate in Venezuela, and for that debate to be defined in the arena, and it is here, in these institutions, where we are going to have the debate,” he said. “It is not in the streets or with violence or surrounding the wrong platform. It is here where we are going to have the debate.”
The presidential candidate Benjamín Rausseo also asked the authorities of the CNE to include in the nine points of the agreement that “whoever is elected commits to avoid political persecution of any leader or official for political reasons.”
(Alba Ciudad) by Luigino Bracci with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
Luigino Bracci
He is passionate about computer science since he was about 14 years old, at that age “a man gave me a small computer that he had bought in the eighties, of those that were connected to a television and had to be programmed to work (a Sinclair ZX81 ), and I really liked it.” On his political inclination, his parents were a great influence. “They were people of very humble origins, both emigrants, dissatisfied with injustice and inequality. But they were not militants of the left. I had many other influences, classmates in HS whose parents were on the left, as well as several teachers who were trained in the Pedagogical and gave us classes at a time as conflictive as it was the presidency of CAP and the military insurrection of Chávez ” He enrolled in the UCV and in 2006 he graduated in Computing, a career that he complements with popular communication in the digital field.
