Venezuela's National Assembly's decision to appoint new members to the National Electoral Council threatens an already unfair system, raising increased concerns for the presidential elections scheduled for 2024 and the legislative and regional elections in 2025, Human Rights Watch said today.
On June 15, the National Assembly's president, Jorge Rodríguez, said that legislators will replace all 15 members of the National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE). The decision came after eight members of the CNE, who were aligned with the government, resigned five years ahead of the end of their terms. The assembly swiftly appointed an 11-member commission that will initially lead the process to replace the council members. All the members of the commission belong to the ruling party, including the wife of President Nicolás Maduro.
"The chances of free and fair elections in Venezuela were already hanging by a thread. This move may make them all but inexistent," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas Director at Human Rights Watch. "Governments with access to Maduro, particularly Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, should take steps to stop this move if they seriously care about Venezuela's return to democracy."
The CNE, composed of five principal members and ten alternates, is responsible for overseeing the entire electoral process, including voter registration, candidate nomination, and the organization and supervision of voting procedures.
Under Venezuelan law, the newly formed 11-member commission will be charged with designating an Electoral Nominations Committee, which in turn will present a list of CNE candidates to the National Assembly. The pro-government coalition controls all but 24 of the 277 members of the Assembly, after a 2020 legislative election that was not free or credible.
For decades, allies of former President Hugo Chavez and current President Maduro packed the CNE, undermining the right to free and fair elections. The CNE became slightly more balanced in 2021, with the appointment of two members from the opposition. An agreement with the CNE allowed a European Union mission to monitor the November 2021 elections. The mission said that the three CNE members who were close to the government were "in control of the CNE executive bodies" but noted that the council was "widely seen as the most balanced of the last 20 years," and that most of its decisions were taken by consensus.
The EU mission concluded that several conditions had undermined the 2021 election's fairness and transparency. These included arbitrary disqualification of political opponents, partisan use of state resources in campaigning, unequal access to media and social media during campaigning, government blockage of websites, and a lack of judicial independence and respect for the rule of law.
The mission issued 23 recommendations, including strengthening the CNE's capacity to sanction candidates who unlawfully use government money to campaign and improving the accuracy of the CNE's voter registry, as well as providing more options for voters, including Venezuelans living abroad, to update their information.
In 2021, the Maduro government and the opposition agreed that, as part of their political negotiations in Mexico, they would discuss "political rights," "electoral guarantees for everyone," and an electoral schedule for observable elections. However, the negotiations are currently stalled, and the parties have yet to address this issue.
CNE fully controlled by Maduro's allies would make implementation of the reforms needed to ensure Venezuelans' right to participate in free and fair elections very unlikely, Human Rights Watch said.
The appointment of new members of the CNE has already affected the opposition's primaries, scheduled for October. Some opposition members had been working to obtain the CNE's support in holding their primaries, but in the wake of the resignations, the opposition decided to "self-manage" the primaries.
Presidents Petro of Colombia and Lula of Brazil have maintained close access to the Maduro government. Publicly, both leaders have emphasized the importance of democracy, free and fair elections, and progress in the political negotiations between the Maduro government and the opposition. But during a recent Maduro visit to Brazil, President Lula described concerns about authoritarianism and lack of democracy in Venezuela as "a narrative."
"The small window of opportunity for a democratic transition to ensure the rights of Venezuelans is closing down," Goebertus said. "If Lula and Petro want their talk about democracy in Venezuela to have any credibility, they should urgently leverage their relationship with Maduro to prevent a full coopting of the country's electoral body."
