Venezuela: Opposition does not accept results of the recall
By Aleksander Boyd
London 16 August 2004 – 10:34GMT – Opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup stated that the Democratic Coordinator does not accept the preliminary results given by CNE Director Carrasquero earlier on today.
The reasons which led the opposition coalition to said stance are:
- Opposition witnesses were not present in the act of totalling ballots;
- Smartmatic, the company in charge of the electronic voting and transmission of data, has not endorsed the results;
- The physical ballots have not arrived in the CNE headquarters, ergo contrasting electronic votes with paper trail copies has not been made;
- Directors Sobella Mejias and Ezequiel Zamora were absent from the audit process;
- Carter Centre and OAS observers have not endorsed the results;
- The process of scrutiny was non existent, i.e. CNE norms establish that the audit committee –composed by political witnesses from both factions, international observers, Smartmatic credited staff and the electoral board of directors in full, need be present at the time. The only ones present in the audit process, which took place in secrecy, were the three chavista directors of the CNE.
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