The European Union (EU) has accepted the invitation of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council. Regional and local elections will be held on November 21. EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Joseph Borel has promised that “for the first time in recent years, Venezuela will hold an unprecedented electoral process with the cooperation of a majority of political forces to elect more than 3,000 regional and municipal representatives.” Borel, in a statement, recalled that the EU had not commissioned an election monitoring mission in Venezuela in the past 15 years.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has announced that elections for governors and mayors will be held on November 21. The announcement condemned the lack of transparency and opened the debate between the opposition parties, which have not participated in elections in the country since 2017. On August 31, Opposition parties have stated they will not run in the by-elections. The new CNE creation includes the country’s first election arbitrator, two rectors who are not allies of Savismo, and Schedule of open dialogue between the government and the opposition in Mexico They pushed the role of the opposition, and are now important in the EU’s response.
The European Union suspended election monitoring in Venezuela in 2005 and 2006, but refused to take part in subsequent ones. In the 2020 Assembly elections, Maduro took control of Parliament, Brussels disagreed with the results. Borel said this Wednesday that the EU would conduct an independent technical assessment of all aspects of the electoral process and propose recommendations to improve future elections. “I hope this work will be an important contribution to a peaceful solution to the crisis and to support a path towards credible, inclusive and transparent elections,” he added.
The leader of the EU Mission is the Portuguese Socialist MEP Isabel Santos. “I look forward to working with state officials, political parties, candidates, civil society organizations and other interested parties with the aim of protecting democratic values and promoting a credible, inclusive and transparent process,” Santos said.
The EU panel will be formed by 11 election experts who will arrive in Caracas in October and will be used across the country with 62 observers throughout the month. The mission will remain in Venezuela until the end of the election process and issue a report on the conduct of the process. The agreement signed between the European Union and the National Electoral Council guarantees freedom of expression and movement to European observers.
The government of Nicolas Maduro was overwhelmed by sanctions and deported from the international community Months of sending dim signals of light abroad and abroad, Like the creation of the new CNE. The absence of opposition parties in elections in recent years has benefited Savismo, which allowed it to extend its power, but the severe economic crisis affecting the country forced Savista to step down. Maduro aims to remove international obstacles, but he knows they will not happen without progress in the country’s democratization process.
Maduro has always been more sensitive to European opinion than US opinion, and on several occasions tried to convince European officials about the legitimacy of the elections organized by Chavismo. After the opposition won most of the seats in the National Assembly, relations between the two gradually began to deteriorate, which was ineffective in preventing the legislature from becoming law.
The total cooling off between Venezuela and Europe came in May 2018, when the Bolivian regime unilaterally organized a presidential election in which it blocked the participation of the main opposition parties and candidates and brought the date of its celebration to eight months ahead. The lack of transparency in these elections has been questioned by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United States.
After the 2014, 2017 and 2019 political storms, Borel was one of the few politicians to rebuild a progressive consensus with Savismo that would allow the country to coordinate progress towards democratic stability.
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