Timothy Gill and David Smilde

The political confrontation over the April 14 presidential election has re-polarized Venezuelan society, including its human rights community. 

On April 16, Foro por la Vida (FV), a coalition  comprised of 15 human rights groups including Provea and Espacio Publico, published a statement on the April 14 elections and the ensuing electoral crisis. In its statement, FV criticizes the use of state resources used for Maduro’s electoral campaign as well as 3,200 alleged electoral irregularities. In its press release FV “calls on civil society to channel their support into the documentation and formalization of complaints and to follow the verification process of the results in a civic manner.”

The FV statement encourages the government to accept the technical assistance offered by the Organization of the American States (OAS) to assist in a full recount of all the votes. The press release also urges the opposition and the government to engage in peaceful dialogue concerning electoral irregularities and the future of Venezuela, and asks the government to thoroughly investigate the political violence and “to refrain from abusive and disproportionate use of force” to quell opposition protests.

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In an article in The National Interest Jennifer McCoy and Michael McCarthy of the Carter Center explain the difference between a recount and an audit and review the other complaints the opposition has and how the CNE can address them.

By: Hugo Pérez Hernáiz

On April 22^nd, PROVEA published a letter on its webpage from the NGO’s General Coordinator, Marino Alvarado, addressed to Communication and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas. Alvarado asked Villegas for derecho a réplica (the right to respond) to the accusations made by Villegas against PROVEA (see our previous posts here and here). Article 58 of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution grants persons “the right to a reply and to a rectification when they are directly affected by inexact and insulting information.”

According to the letter by Alvarado, Villegas first mentioned PROVEA’s questioning of the official version of opposition supporters’ attacks on CDIs (government run health centers) on April 18^th during a telephone interview on the public Venezolana de Televisión with reporter Vanessa Davies. During that interview Villegas offered Marino Alvarado an “anticipated right to respond” to “come and discuss this issue in front of the cameras.”

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Hugo Pérez Hernáiz

The Defensora del Pueblo, Gabriela Ramírez continued the critical exchange between the Maduro government and human rights NGO PROVEA over the latter’s contention that the Barrio Adentro health modules (CDIs) supposedly vandalized and burned down by opposition supporters showed no sign of such attacks.

In an April 20 press conference, Ramírez said that “PROVEA has devoted itself to disclaiming the denunciations of the attacks on health centers. By doing so they are acting against their own principles as a human rights organization.” Government news bureau Agencia Venezolana de Noticias suggested that the web page of the Defensoría would soon publish a chronology of the attacks with graphic proofs. Ramírez has sent links through Twitter to several pictures that she claims are of damaged CDIs. In a national cadena at noon on April 23, Ramírez’s declarations against PROVEA were repeated, accompanied by images of CDIs allegedly burned.  The images of the claimed attacks can be seen at the web page of the Defensoría del Pueblo.

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The Washington Office on Latin America is pleased to invite you to a discussion featuring

David Smilde
Senior Fellow, WOLA
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Georgia
 
Tuesday, April 23
1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
Washington Office on Latin America
1666 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009

To RSVP, please click here. For more information, please contact Adam Schaffer ataschaffer@wola.org or (202) 797-2171.

The event will be available via livestream here.

On April 14, Venezuelans went to the polls to choose their president, and for the first time in 15 years, late President Hugo Chávez was not on the ballot. After Chávez succumbed to cancer in early March, many polls and analyses predicted the continuation of Chavismo through the election of Nicolas Maduro, the acting president and Chávez’s handpicked successor. Maduro did win the vote, but not by the wide margin that many had anticipated: he prevailed over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by only one to two percentage points out of nearly 15 million votes cast. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council has declared Maduro the winner, and he is due to be sworn in as president on April 19. But Capriles has yet to concede defeat, alleging voting irregularities and demanding a full audit of the ballots.

WOLA Senior Fellow David Smilde, who was in Venezuela for the April 14 vote as well as the October 2012 elections, will discuss these developments as he sketches a picture of the country as the post-Chávez era begins.

To follow the events in Venezuela as they unfold, please visit WOLA’s Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights blog.

By: Hugo Pérez Hernáiz

Yesterday afternoon, at the same time President Maduro was taking his oath as the next president of Venezuela at the National Assembly, human rights group PROVEA published on its web page a communiqué stating that its General Coordinator Marino Alvarado had received a phone call from Communication and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas. PROVEA qualified the conversation as “cordial.”

 Minister Villegas expressed his “surprise” at the information published by the organization that the CDIs (medical modules that are part of the government’s Barrio Adentro program, which provides healthcare in popular sectors) the government has been claiming were attacked by opposition supporters during the protests following the April 14^th elections showed no signs of such attacks. According to PROVEA, Villegas told Alvarado that there were many victims of the attacks and that he would be sending them to PROVEA to make their denunciations so that the NGO could “correct” its statements. Alvarado replied that the organization would welcome and listen to the victims and reminded Villegas that PROVEA has condemned all acts of violence over the past week.

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Watch the webcast.

By: Hugo Pérez Hernáiz

The surprisingly close results of the April 14^th presidential election may, at least in part,be explained by an improved mobilization strategy of the opposition.

We have argued before on this blog that the mobilization strategy of pro-government parties on election days, especially the PSUV, has proven far superior to the opposition’s. On October 7^th, Election Day last year, as afternoon rumors spoke of high participation levels by the opposition, the PSUV launched its Operación Remate (operation mop-up), a get-out-the vote effort before the polls closed. The strategy included the use of hundreds of volunteer motorcyles that took voters to the polls, and, according to the opposition, the use of official government and armed forces vehicles for that same purpose. The opposition did not seem to have an equivalent strategy in place for October 7^th, and as the afternoon progressed, inside sources from the situation room of opposition party Primero Justicia told us that “our transport volunteers and motorcycles that were supposed to go to the centers and take food to our witnesses started to bail out, some just turned off their cell phones.”

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