UN panel raises concern over lack of transparency in Venezuela’s presidential election

By Rabia Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - A panel of experts from the UN raised concerns Tuesday over the integrity and transparency of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential elections.

"⁠In sum, the results management process of the CNE (Venezuela's National Electoral Council) fell short of the basic transparency and integrity measures that are essential to holding credible elections," they said in a statement.

The four-member team of experts, dispatched by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, spent over a month in the capital Caracas as one of the few independent observers invited by President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

The experts said in their interim report that the result management process "did not follow national legal and regulatory provisions, and all stipulated deadlines were missed.”

"In the experience of the panel, the announcement of an election outcome without the publication of its details or the release of tabulated results to candidates has no precedent in contemporary democratic elections. This had a negative impact on confidence in the outcome announced by the CNE among a large part of the Venezuelan electorate," they added.

The experts said they reviewed a sample of the documents that are currently in the public domain, including those posted online by the opposition and that are reported to be results protocols from various polling stations.

"All of those reviewed exhibit all the security features of the original result protocols. This suggests that a key transparency safeguard may be available, as intended, with respect to any officially released results," they said.

However, the panel added that they "did not set out to ascertain or review the vote totals.”

Venezuela's National Electoral Council announced on July 29 that Maduro had secured a third term in office with 51.2% of the vote -- a result rejected by the opposition, which maintains the election results are fraudulent.