Summary
- The Identity Mission continues registering voters in the RE one month before regional elections, notwithstanding that –through this way- it should have been closed 6 months earlier.
- Aliens’ naturalization without an adequate control.
- Special Identity Plan (Identity Mission) turned out being massive acts of political proselytism and electoral campaign, in favor of the Government.
- President Chávez admits political and electoral condition of the Special Identity Plan.
- Violation of the Organic Law for the Protection of the Public Patrimony (LOSPP), when not closing the RE 60 days prior to electoral processes.
- RE grew 16% in only 7 months, while –traditionally- it had grown an average of 10% each 5 years.
- CNE breaches the LOSPP when modifying the electoral circumscription of citizens without their prior consent.
- Electoral circumscription changes affect more than 80 municipalities and 30% of the population.
1. The Government of President Chávez-Frías, together with the National Electoral Council (CNE), has undertaken a Special Identification Plan known as 'Mision Identidad'. The Basic Law on Suffrage and Political Participation (LOSPP) clearly indicates that those officials participating in this Special Plan who are simultaneously overseeing enrollment into the Electoral Register (RE) are 'auxiliary agents' and that enrollment through these agents must terminate six months before the electoral process (Article 92). Therefore, all registrations in the electoral rolls performed after February 7, 2005 by way of these 'auxiliary agents' should be rejected.
2. The issuance of National Identity Cards has proceeded in conjunction with a process of nationalization of foreigners of a massive scope and over which there is an absolute lack of adequate control. There have been cases of foreigners, such Rodrigo Granda, el de Gentil Galvis-Patiño, Rubén González alias "El Chiguiro" or El Comandante , who, having been granted Venezuelan identity documents, have voted.
3. The nationalization of foreign-born individuals has been performed in the context of huge public concentrations of a political and electoral nature, in the course of which the Government of President Chávez-Frías distributes T-shirts with the colors and symbols of the government party as political slogans.
4. President Chávez has publicly acknowledged the political and electoral nature of these identification processes . On November 12, 2004 , in a speech at the Military Academy, addressing Ministers, Members of the National Assembly, Governors, Mayors and other supporters of his Government, he stated in relation to this issue :
- " I will make only one comment. The issuance of Identity Cards must be continued. We did many things well, but should we not have undertaken the issuance of identity documents, Oh my God! We would have even lost the Recall Referendum. Those people got four million votes and that should not make us feel as winners, no! The opposition, when it defeated Arias-Cárdenas, had less than three million votes - two million six-hundred thousand - and now it gets four million. Do you realize that they had the required number of signatures? That they were able to collect them? . I was always told that that they would be unable to collect the signatures, but why would they not if they managed to collect 2 million 600 thousand and only 2 million 400 thousand are required . Ah! They got 4 million" (N° 258, page 27).
5 . According to the Law on Suffrage and Political Participation (LOSSP), the Electoral Register is permanent. It must close only in the case of elections and for the preparation of electoral rolls 60 days before such elections are to be held. For last October's elections, this legal provision was not respected. The Electoral Register remained open for a longer period and no indication was given as to when it would close.
6 . Normally, of electors included in the Electoral Register has grown around 11 % every five year, that is to say between elections. Nevertheless, between July 10 and 28, 2004, according to official numbers by the National Electoral Council, the number of electors went from 12.518.812 to 14.037.900, an increase of 12,9 % in only an 18 day period, and of nearly 20 % in comparison to the last presidential election held in 2000. For the parliamentary elections held on December 4th, 2005, the CNE admitted mistakes in the Electoral Registry, when publicly recognizing that 600 thousand addresses were incomplete. The above constitutes an irregularity, given that a few weeks before the parliamentary elections, the Electoral Registry was still being manipulated, contravening article 120 of the LOSPP (“Voting and Political Participation Organic Law”), which stipulates that such registry shall be closed 60 days prior to any election.
7. In violation of the Law on Suffrage and Political Participation, the National Electoral Council proceeded to unilaterally move electors from one electoral circumscription to another. Such a change, or migration, was performed without the elector's consent (Art. 69 of the LOSSP) In the case of presidential elections or of consultative or presidential recall referenda, such migrations may not be of significance, but in the case of local or regional elections, such the August 2005 local elections and the coming December 2005 congressional elections, they are of critical significance. In such cases, a difference of only a few hundred votes may change the result of an election.
8. Another violation to the law undertaken by the National Electoral Council has to do with modifications to the electoral circumscriptions. SUMATE has estimated that changes introduced to electoral circumscriptions in more than 19 states and more than 80 municipalities involve, based on population data projections by the National Statistics Institute INE), more than 30 % of the estimated population. Under no circumstances can such alterations be considered 'minimal', as recently indicated by the President of the National Electoral Council, Jorge Rodríguez. They are also illegal in as far as they are not based on projections approved by the National Assembly nor performed within the time frame required by Article 6 of the Law on Suffrage and Political Participation.
9.
After the
parliamentary elections held on December 3, 2005, which registered an
abstention equal to 74,75%
according to preliminary official figures and equal to 82.31%
according to Súmate, as a response of the citizens to the electoral
institution (CNE) which did not offer the necessary electoral conditions to
carry on clean and transparent elections in which the elector’s would be
respected, in this sense, various sectors of the community, including three
National and Autonomous Universities: Universidad
Central de Venezuela (UCV), Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) and Universidad
Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB), made a technical proposal to the CNE,
consisting in Auditing the Electoral Registry (RE), with the purpose of
correcting demographical and statistical inconsistencies of same.
10.
The audit
proposal brought to the CNE by the universities UCV, USB and UCAB, was to be
performed by technical and statistical experts with an impeccable academic
life, who would make a comparison between the Electoral Registry (RE) Data
and the total Venezuelan population, so as to correct the inconsistencies in
the RE. Regarding this proposal, in May 2006, the CNE answered the
universities with a general call to all institutions willing to take part in
this revision of the RE. Six (6) universities and the Venezuelan Institute
for Scientific Investigations (IVIC), depending on the Ministry of High
Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, respectively, which
authorities are designated by the government, answered the invitation. Such
institutions presented an audit project for the RE,
consisting of four (4)
modules:
register validation, data updating, historical evolution of the voters and
depuration of the registry from mistakes,
that is, a merely electronic audit.
(See
news resume).
(See Electoral Monitor # 14).
11.
After
unsuccessful
negotiations in order to integrate the presented audit proposals into a
unique project, the electoral institution decided to deny the initial
proposal of the UCV, USB and UCAB, and began the audit with the
participation of the other abovementioned seven (7) institutions, therewith
reporting
results similar to those once reported by the Electoral Promotion and
Consulting Center (CAPEL),
which study did not prove if all registered electors actually exist.
Finally, the CNE gave the
audit results,
declaring that “The
Venezuelan
Electoral Registry is an instrument technically apt to be used in the
presidential electoral process of December 3, 2006”.
(Source: Presentation of the results of the Universities’ Audit to the RE,
CNE)
