Former president of the US empire and head of the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter, pictured during a conference with a banner in the background reading "Carter Center." Photo: Reuters/File photo.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Representatives of the Carter Center of the US empire have arrived in Venezuela, following the agreement between the Venezuelan government and the opposition regarding electoral conditions that was recently signed in Bridgetown, Barbados. “Carter Center representatives will discuss the consideration of an invitation to deploy a technical electoral observation mission for the 2024 presidential election in accordance with the recently signed agreement,” claimed the US electoral organization.
Their arrival was reported this Thursday, November 2, by the US organization in a statement posted on its website. In the document, the Carter Center says that its delegation will meet with Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) authorities, the signatories of the Barbados agreement, and various members of political parties, national electoral observers, and civil society groups.
The delegations of the government of Venezuela and the right-wing opposition’s Unitary Platform signed two partial agreements in Barbados on October 17. One of the agreements regarded the “promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all,” while the other was for the “protection of the vital interests of the nation,” in relation to the ongoing Essequibo territorial dispute.
Representatives from The Carter Center have arrived in Caracas, Venezuela following the formal agreement on electoral conditions by the government of Venezuela and the opposition’s Unitary Platform in Barbados on October 17.
Full statement:https://t.co/fxxxd6BNO5
— The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) November 2, 2023
The Carter Center had established permanent offices in Venezuela between 2002 and August 2015, and had regularly monitored Venezuelan elections since 2002, according to local media. In none of those electoral observation missions had the Carter Center marked the Venezuelan elections as fraudulent or in some other negative light, as can usually be read in Washington’s narrative and mainstream media.
In 2002, former president of the US empire, Jimmy Carter, the head of the Carter Center, declared that Venezuela’s electoral system is the best in the world. “As a matter of fact, out of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world,” the politician stated, speaking at an annual event in Atlanta. “Venezuela has developed a fully automated touch-screen voting system, which now uses thumbprint recognition technology and prints off a receipt to confirm voters’ choices.”
The “partial agreement on the promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all” includes a provision for the 2024 presidential elections to have observation by the European Union (EU), the Carter Center, and a panel of experts from the United Nations, among other bodies.
The agreement also calls for defining a schedule for the 2024 presidential elections, and that “authorization will be promoted to all presidential candidates and political parties, as long as they meet the requirements established to participate in the presidential election, consistent with the procedures established in Venezuelan law.” Venezuelan law clearly establishes that any Venezuelan citizen might be subjected to disqualifications from running for public offices, as is the case for many opposition individuals, as well as many former United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) individuals, within the framework of article 105 of the General Comptrollership Office Law.
In Venezuela, the far-right opposition interchangeably opts between participating or not in electoral processes based on its projected chances of victory and the instructions they receive from the White House. For that reason many experts question the validity of the hypocritical narrative from the US empire and mainstream media with their mantra calling for so-called “free and fair” elections in Venezuela.
On this line of thinking, when the chances for an opposition victory are clear, it opts to participate. In some such occasions it even wins, but when it is defeated, it usually decries any loss as fraud, notably failing to prove their claims with any kind of solid evidence. Most recently when the victory chances have not been clear, it has refused to participate in the elections, a strategy that has weakened its credibility among even its more hardcore supporters.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/AU
