Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday (November 28) condemned the members of the EU Election Observation Mission who oversaw the voting last weekend as “spy” and accused them of trying to “stain” regional elections in the preliminary report.
The EU delegation said on Tuesday that the conditions for local and regional elections are better than previous voting, but they expressed concern about the arbitrary prohibition of candidates for administrative reasons, the postponement of the opening of polling centers, and the “expansion of the use of national resources in the campaign”.
“They tried to tarnish the election process (in a report), but they couldn’t. A delegation of spies – they are not observers – roamed freely across the country, monitoring the country’s social, economic, and political life,” Ma Douro said when it was broadcast on national television.
The delegation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The vote last weekend was the first time in 15 years that the European Union sent a delegation to observe the Venezuelan elections. The team includes 1,000 observers who supervised the voting in 22 of the 23 elections, and the full report will be submitted within two months.
In this election, opposition politicians ran for votes for the first time since 2017, but suffered a tragic defeat, winning only 3 out of 23 governor and 117 mayor positions, and the ruling party won 210 mayoral elections.
Several mayoral campaigns have not yet been called, and a governor’s office—in Barinas State, a Chavezist stronghold—has not been called either.
“The EU cannot tarnish the electoral process, it is impeccable and beautiful,” Maduro said.
He said the president will hold a meeting with opposition governors “in the next few hours,” but did not provide more details. He also said that because voters punish the party in opinion polls, the ruling Socialist Party may lose out in some states and municipalities.
According to data from the country’s electoral authorities, although the ruling party won the most governorships, the votes of the Socialist Party fell from the 5.9 million votes won in the 2017 regional elections to less than 4 million.
