By: Anderson Leal, 2L
In response to the disputed Venezuelan election results, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a press release that announced sanctions against 16 members of the “Maduro-aligned” National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (STJ). The sanctions, under Executive Order 13692, target officials who support Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate election and Maduro’s harsh suppression of free expression following the election. According to OFAC, the sanctioned officials obstructed a fair and inclusive election process and violated Venezuelans’ civil and human rights.
CNE officials had declared Maduro’s victory but refused to release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide. The CNE reported that Maduro received 51% of the votes and opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia received 44%. Despite the lack of credible evidence or physical reports of tallied ballots, the STJ publicly certified the CNE’s results, granting Maduro another six-year term.
On election day, the U.S.-based Carter Center had deployed 17 experts and observers and on July 30, the Carter Center released a statement concluding that it could not verify or corroborate the CNE’s election results. The Carter Center criticized the CNE for failing to disclose disaggregated results by polling station, describing this as a “serious breach of electoral principles.” Additionally, the Carter Center found that the Venezuelan electoral process “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages and violated numerous provisions of its own national laws.”
Leaders across the Americas and the European Union have also demanded transparency. Even leftwing leaders from Colombia and Brazil, who have longstanding ties to the Chavismo political movement, refused to recognize Maudro’s victory until the counts were released. This sharply contrasts with the responses from authoritarian leaders such as Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who asserted that Maduro had “cleanly and unequivocally defeated the pro-imperialist opposition.” As well as Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who reiterated Maduro was “always a welcome guest on Russian soil.”
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo has stated that since the July 28 election, there have been widespread arrests of Venezuelans exercising their political and civil rights, along with various intimidation tactics aimed at silencing opposition figures. These actions include issuing an arrest warrant for presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, which forced him to seek asylum in Spain.
