What should mark the beginning of the year for a country whose opposition leadership has placed all the eggs of the future in the single basket of elections? First of all, that elections are indeed held. And since it is a question of achieving that in a country with an authoritarian regime in power, that would be the first obstacle to overcome. The second obstacle would be the set of minimum conditions in which this process would be developed to make it fair and transparent, which, again, is precisely what an authoritarian regime accustomed to cheating would not do, so it should be "forced" or "pushed" to modify its current electoral system. And the third and last obstacle, that those opposition candidates with a chance of defeating those in power may participate in the elections.
Each of the three obstacles has its own level of complexity and certainly does not depend on anything the opposition can do unilaterally, and without external help. However, to make this analytical exercise simpler, I will take as overcome the first and the last obstacle, in other words, I will assume that the regime will hold elections and that all the candidates now illegally disqualified will participate.
I imagine that at this point, having overcome in theory the two obstacles mentioned above, which is already quite a lot to say, most of you will think that should be enough to defeat the regime. But, wasn't that what we had in 2006, 2012, and 2013, not to mention Maduro's 2018 electoral mamarrachada with the collaborationist opposition? The regime always won the presidential electoral "triumph". What would be the difference now?
The answer was given by María Corina Machado (MCM) in her first speech of the year 2024, when she announced the creation of a legion of citizens for the defense of the vote: "We are already building the most formidable structure for the defense of the vote: The 600K Network, this is an immense legion of 600 thousand citizens formed and coordinated, as it has never been done before in this continent. Together with this enormous citizen force we will be invincible..." (see in Spanish @MariaCorinaYa, in https://twitter.com/MariaCorinaYA/status/1741886560415404355).
And I could not agree more with that if they drastically change the rules that have been used up to this moment to scrutinize the votes of Venezuelans. And it is not a question of whether or not machines are used in the process, or whether there is one or another electoral condition, but that at the closing of each one of the tables, each and every one of the votes cast are manually scrutinized, in front of the same witness voters and the general public, as it was done in the early days of Venezuelan democracy. Each center opened its doors freely to whoever wished to witness the counting of the ballots.
An army of witnesses that cannot open 46% of the ballot boxes where the voters cast their votes would be worthless, is it that Venezuelans who by bad luck voted in tables that were not "audited" by lot, do not have the right to have their vote counted and scrutinized by a qualified witness? This aberration, born of the most rancid electoral delinquency of Chavismo, continues to be a black hole through which the regime has the opportunity to fraudulently drain opposition votes during the totalization. I gave this explanation in detail in a lecture 10 years ago at the Pío Tamayo Chair of the UCV, entitled "The perversion of the automated electoral system and its political consequences" in the section subtitled "The disappearance of the Manual Scrutiny and the birth of the Citizen Statistical Verification (the famous 54%)" (see in Spanish lecture of October 21, 2013, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2015/08/la-perversion-del-sistema-electoral.html).
The activities to be carried out by the 600K army that MCM talked about would be substantially different if the modality of the scrutiny changes. The regime has the proven capacity to carry out a technical fraud in front of the eyes of 600 thousand people, and MCM would have no other alternative but to accept a result in favor of the regime. If they were able to make 10 million votes appear out of nowhere, without people in the streets on December 3, 2023, imagine what they can do if there are people to justify a fraud. Anything can happen with a prestidigitator CNE. Then, all the boxes MUST BE OPENED in order to defend those votes. Otherwise, there is a risk of working for the regime because the opposition will have no choice but to accept what the CNE says.
If there is a struggle to be fought, it is not only to organize thousands of citizens for the defense of the vote -which in itself is a huge challenge- but the way in which those votes will be counted. And there is no other way to do it than for the population to see them with their own eyes at the voting tables when the boxes are opened and the ballots are counted. If 46% remain dark in their boxes without being counted, they can swear that the regime has a way to change them in their favor. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that going to an election with the same rules as the past presidential elections will change the outcome just because we are the majority. We were the majority in 2012 and 2013 and the unaudited boxes could not be opened because it was established by law (see in Spanish The 12 thousand Tiby's boxes, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2013/04/las-12-mil-cajas-de-tiby.html).
For those who still do not fully understand the difference between manual and automated canvassing, I strongly suggest you read my November 2013 article on this subject (see in Spanish The Electronic Voting Trap: From Manual to Automated Scrutiny, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2013/11/la-trampa-del-voto-electronico-de.html).
I can't get tired of explaining this difference because the magnitude and implications of the problem of having an automated canvass by law is still not understood. And that is why I see with great concern that people are promising to work to organize an army of vote defenders, without first being clear about what they are going to defend. If you are not allowed by the law of the regime to count all the votes you CANNOT DEFEND THEM, even if you have a million vote defenders.
Having said the above, the clear fight ahead is the radical change of the system of counting the votes of Venezuelans, so a new electoral mechanism must be proposed to the International Community and to the regime itself at the negotiating table, as well as the rules and conditions to be applied in that election to be measured in a fair and transparent way with them. And not to leave the table and even less to go to elections until this is achieved. Once the agreed system is clear, the army of defenders can be told what they will have to defend.
Some might call this "electoral conditions". But in my opinion, what is needed goes beyond conditions. One condition is that there are international observers, that the regime allows the opposition witnesses to enter the centers, that the Armed Forces limit themselves to guard the electoral centers and not to decide what will be done inside them, that the regulations are fully complied with. These are examples of conditions.
But what is at issue here is not only the existence of conditions that apply to all, but the very nature of the system that will be applied in this election from which we are supposed to get rid of this regime of criminals. That is the very core of the problem we have in Venezuela, and if it is not changed, "electoral conditions" will be worthless and the 600K will have nothing to defend. If the solution is electoral, it is time to start that fight before...
Caracas, January 4, 2024
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