Carter Center's Planned Inconsistencies Regarding Venezuela's Presidential Elections

By Misión Verdad – Aug 1, 2024

The Carter Center Foundation (CC), a non-governmental organization founded in 1982 by former US President Jimmy Carter, issued a statement regarding the results of the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela.

The communiqué, published on Tuesday, July 30, states that the elections “did not comply with international parameters and standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered as democratic,” a rather political opinion instead of being a technical one, especially since the organization did not complete its oversight process and left Venezuela before the electoral schedule for the July 28 elections was completed.

The pronouncement of the CC could be considered as deliberately inconsistent, aimed at bolstering the ongoing international political and media campaign to delegitimize the electoral process and the results issued by the National Electoral Council (CNE). In this way, the Carter Center is contributing to the conditions to intensify the scenario of regime change in Venezuela.

Venezuelan Opposition Cries Fraud, People Reelect President Maduro

The following are the most serious issues with the CC statement:

In principle, the statement tries to replay in Venezuela the method applied by the Organization of American States (OAS) in the 2019 presidential elections of Bolivia. Its content contributes elements of confusion and delegitimization to aggravate the coup agenda.
The CC did not complete its “observation” work in Venezuela. It departed hastily from the country, with the post-electoral audits still pending, disregarding the stipulated schedule agreed upon by the CNE, international observers, and all political parties participating in the July 28 election. The CC criticized some steps of the process and made accusations without going deeper into the facts it highlighted.
Although the CNE and the Venezuelan government have reported on the attacks suffered by the CNE website and system, the CC statement does not mention it. They did not register this element as part of their considerations. Such omission makes invisible this serious circumstance surrounding the electoral process.
The haste and incompleteness of the “observations” by CC turn the pronouncement into a partial record of the election. Although the organization deployed 17 experts and observers as of June 29, as stated in the communiqué, the statement is neither objective nor of a technical character.
The CC did not classify the illegal publication of voting minutes by the opposition as an electoral crime. With this tactic, in conjunction with not signing the Agreement for the Recognition of Results declared by the CNE at the beginning of the campaign, the far-right opposition Unitary Platform (PUD) intends to create a situation of parallel election results to disrupt the process. Thus, the CC’s statement provides a stimulus to the parallel vote counting structure controlled by María Corina Machado.
One of the CC’s principles is “that solving difficult problems requires careful analysis.” However, in Venezuela, the CC is encouraging the problem through a biased reading of reality. Instead of waiting, gathering more data, and establishing communication channels with institutional entities, the CC chose to add fuel to the conflict in favor of the opposition factors.
The Carter Center depends on its “prestige” since earlier it has contributed to political stability in Venezuela. However, on this occasion, it highlighted “incidents of tension or violence reported in some localities” without specifying by which political side the violence was committed. The non completion of the observation process should signify the end of CC’s credibility in electoral matters in any country that considers inviting it.
After stating that “the observation is based on the utmost respect for the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and only intends to contribute to peace and the improvement of its electoral processes,” the CC is participating in actions that, in other countries, have resulted in situations of prolonged conflict. The omission of the opposition’s plan to not recognize the results even before the election took place, a plan in which international media participated, cannot be overlooked.

In an international press conference after presenting an electoral review appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice, President Nicolás Maduro asked the CC how many statements it had published after the US presidential elections in November 2020, when the then president and candidate for re-election, Donald Trump, had complained of fraud against him, executed by the Democratic Party and its candidate, current President Joe Biden.

The answer to that question is more than obvious. The CC has answered it with its silence.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/DZ