Venezuela opposition looks for answers after election loss

CARACAS, Venezuela – Voting sites were shifted to distant neighborhoods with rampant crime. Ballots featured the faces of opposition candidates who lost in primaries. The government-stacked National Electoral Council denied monitoring accreditation to one of Venezuela’s most important independent observers.

The opposition pointed on Monday to those irregularities and others that began the moment regional elections were called to explain a staggering loss in gubernatorial contests it had expected to win in Sunday’s voting.

“We encountered an absolutely fraudulent system,” said Carlos Ocariz, the opposition’s candidate in Miranda, the nation’s second most populous state where the candidate of the ruling socialist party won.

Opposition leaders vowed to contest the vote and called for protests, though there was no sign of the mass anti-government demonstrations that wracked Venezuela this year.

National Electoral Council officials stood by the results showing that socialist candidates won at least 17 of the country’s 23 governorships despite widespread anger over a crumbling economy where triple-digit inflation, soaring crime, and food and medicine shortages make life a daily struggle for many Venezuelans.

Socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello said that if the opposition has proof of fraud they should share it.

“We’re still waiting,” he said.

The contentious election threatened to further divide this already polarized nation and throw the strained opposition into deeper disarray. Some worried the election loss might strengthen the more radical elements of the opposition and jeopardize chances for a negotiated solution to the political conflict.

At least one of the losing opposition candidates accepted the results.

“We lost. We have to accept it,” said Henri Falcon, a one-time socialist party politician who in recent years joined the opposition and lost his re-election bid as governor of Lara state. The official vote count said he trailed ruling party candidate Carmen Melendez by 18 points in the northern state.

Even before the election, the opposition was struggling against apathy and disillusionment among Venezuelans, though the official turnout figure of 61 percent seemed to indicate many people did vote.

“There is a lot of frustration,” said Luis Vicente Leon, president of Datanalsis, a Caracas-based polling agency. “They (the opposition) are going to be divided between those who believe there was massive fraud, others who think it’s the fault of the leadership, and some who believe `chavismo’ has come back.”

That was certainly the ruling party’s conclusion Monday, claiming that the victory was a profound endorsement for the socialist ideals installed by the late President Hugo Chavez nearly two decades ago.

“Chavismo is more alive than ever,” said Hector Rodriguez, who defeated Ocariz in the Miranda governor’s contest.

While many opposition leaders were silent Monday, Ocariz held a news conference to denounce the vote as a sham marred by last-minute shifts in voting sites, rejection of independent polling place monitors and the inclusion of already-excluded candidates on the ballots. He said there also were instances of multiple voting.

The U.S. State Department denounced many of the same irregularities, promising to wield the “full weight” of U.S. diplomatic and economic power in support of the Venezuelan people. The Trump administration has sanctioned dozens of Venezuelan leaders and prohibited U.S. banks from issuing new credit to the Maduro government.

“We condemn the lack of free and fair elections yesterday in Venezuela,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

If there were irregularities in the vote count, Luis Lander, director of the independent Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, said the first place to look for evidence would be the thousands of cardboard boxes containing paper printouts showing exactly how each person voted at the electronic voting machines

The country’s voting system has a number of safeguards in place to ensure results aren’t manipulated and the opposition hasn’t yet provided any evidence. But protections like the ability to compare print-out results and electronic tallies reduce the possibility of fraud but don’t eliminate it, Lander said.

In August, voting software company Smartmatic accused the electoral council of manipulating voter turnout by more than 1 million people in a vote for delegates to a new, all-powerful constitutional assembly. Officials denied the accusation.

“It’s a system handled by human beings,” said Lander, whose organization was denied accreditation to monitor Sunday’s vote. “To work well, they have to perform right.”

Any impact on the vote caused by moves like relocating voting sites would be more difficult to measure, he said.

“Of course it has an impact,” Lander said. “But how much is hard to know.”

Representatives with the Council of Latin American Electoral Experts, an international body that observed the vote but did not have access to the same data as a traditional independent observer, said the vote had proceeded normally. Some opposition members have previously criticized the council has as being partial toward the government.

A defiant Cabello suggested the opposition might now turn inward.

“Take a spiritual retreat,” he urged. “Reflect.”