Capriles demands recount
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s government-friendly electoral council indicated yesterday that it would quickly certify the presidential victory of Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor, apparently ignoring opposition demands for a recount in the tight race.
The move is bound to further heighten instability in an already deeply polarised nation, where Nicolas Maduro was elected Sunday by a margin of 50.7 per cent to 49.1 per cent — a difference of just 235,000 votes out of the 14.8 million cast.
“Until every vote is counted, Venezuela has an illegitimate president,” opposition candidate Henrique Capriles tweeted yesterday.
His demand for a recount was being considered by the National Electoral Council, and one of the council’s five members, independent Vicente Diaz, had also proposed a full recount.
But its president, Tibisay Lucena, said Sunday night in announcing the outcome that the result was “irreversible” and the electoral council’s press office said Maduro’s victory would be “proclaimed” yesterday. State television called on government supporters to join Maduro in a public square for the event.
Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor, yesterday demanded that the proclamation be suspended and called on his supporters to mass outside the electoral council today. He urged Venezuelans to bang their kitchen pans if the proclamation goes forward — a popular Latin American form of protest known as a “cacerolazo” — to let the world know our outrage, our anger.
He also claimed that members of the military — “an important group in various cities” — had been detained for trying to guarantee a free and fair election. He said they had been ordered to ignore abuses they witnessed. Capriles did not offer further details, such as how many were involved.
He says his campaign’s vote count resulted in “a different result” and has received more than 3,200 complaints of irregularities — all by
pro-government forces. He demanded every single ballot be recounted.
The winner is to be formally inaugurated on Friday for a six-year term.
Sworn in as acting president after Chavez’s March 5 death, Maduro squandered a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks earlier as Capriles accused the ruling Chavistas of running the oil-rich country into the ground.
By contrast, Chavez defeated Capriles by a nearly 11-point margin in October.
Maduro said in his victory speech, Sunday night, that he had no problem with a recount.
“Let 100 per cent of the ballot boxes be opened,” he said. “We’re going to do it; we have no fear.”
He did not, however, endorse a manual recount of individual ballots and his campaign manager, Jorge Rodrigez, repeated that position yesterday.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said a “100 per cent audit” of the results would be “an important, prudent and necessary step to ensure that all Venezuelans have confidence in these results”.
The secretary-general of the Organisation of American States, José Miguel Insulza, also called for a “full recount”.
Under Venezuela’s voting system, 54 per cent of the tallies printed out by individual voting machines are routinely audited and that was done Sunday night, said Dashiell Lopez, coordinator of the independent voting rights group SUMATE. Individual ballots are not included in that audit.
No independent observer teams monitored the election as Chavez’s government, in recent years, has rejected them. Instead, it invited witnesses to “accompany the process”.
The challenger’s camp has not yet explained how it intends to proceed with the recount demand. Venezuelan election law does not specify how a recount might proceed or whether a candidate even has the right to demand one, said Lopez. He said an attempt to carry out a recount in December in Bolivar state failed.
The logistics alone are daunting. A total of 39,319 boxes of paper ballot receipts were emitted by Venezuela’s electronic voting system Sunday. They are now stored in warehouses under the control of the military. Those receipts would need to be checked against vote count printouts emitted by each individual voting machine. Those results would then be checked with the electoral council’s central tally.
The electronic voting system itself was never questioned by the opposition, and it has drawn praise from institutions, including the Carter Centre, as among the most reliable.
Although the nation appeared calm yesterday, the mood was tense after an often ugly, mudslinging campaign.
“We have a president today who is a political disaster, who couldn’t even mobilise his people,” Julio Borges, an opposition leader, told Globovision, Venezuela’s last wholly independent TV station.
Analysts called the result a disaster for Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver who is believed to have close ties to Cuba.
He faces enormous economic challenges, as well as the task of holding together a movement built around the magnetism of the now-departed Chavez.
A hint of internal trouble to come came in a tweet by National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who many consider Maduro’s main rival within their movement.
“The results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism,” he said.
Few outside Venezuela had bigger stakes in the race than Cuban President Raul Castro, whose country receives generous subsidised oil exports from Venezuela in exchange for sending doctors, military advisories and other help to Venezuela. Capriles had promised to end that exchange.
Castro issued a statement congratulating Maduro for “this transcendental triumph”.
But on Havana streets, Cubans were still worried.
“The difference in votes is very small, and I think that it will be very hard for Maduro to govern. For us in Cuba, well, I’m very pessimistic. I think it will be a debacle,” said Maite Romero, a 74-year-old retiree.
Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, had counted on a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader, and in victory, asked his spirit for help, holding up a crucifix pinned to a card showing Chavez.