Maduro confident of being re-elected, boasts of safety of Venezuela’s electoral system

by Lyf Compton

in Caracas

Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who will on Sunday, July 28, face the electorate in his country, says he is confident of being re-elected to office, despite efforts by the United States (US) and their allies to remove him from office.

Maduro also noted that Sunday’s elections are extremely important to the Caribbean as the region strives to free itself from outside influences and “oligarchs”.

“Tomorrow, we are going to have an historical moment; this election has become a world event…,” Maduro said on Saturday, one day before the presidential elections.

He was speaking to over 900 election observers from over 100 countries during a session at the Convention Centre at Bolivar Park, where he had invited the foreigners to meet with him.

Days before this meeting with the international and regional observers, several other observers were blocked from entering Venezuela. Maduro however noted on Saturday that “the outsiders” were part of the “usual team” that seek to badmouth Venezuela and its election process.

He said the 2024 Olympics are happening now in Paris, but Venezuela has stolen the spotlight as the world awaits the outcome of the presidential elections which he is confident of winning.

He said Venezuela is on a sovereign path and people want democracy and peace and not to be a colony of any other country.

“The electoral system is the safest system that exists, you will see…” Maduro told the visitors, while noting that Internet bots are being used to sully him and the election process.

“They use bots to make people believe people are against me…but bots don’t vote,” Maduro said to loud applause while stressing that Venezuela is the land of “liberators”.

Maduro said that Western media outlets deform Venezuelan reality but that will be defeated by the people through the voting process.

He said that some people are mad at him because he said Venezuela’s voting system is one of the best in the world, but that is a fact as the system has 16 ways to do audits and is the safest system in the world.

He said there is fingerprinting to prove the identity of the voter and after identity is verified and the person votes, they get a slip of paper to indicate that they voted correctly, then that slip is placed in a box and at end of the polling process, a record is printed and every vote is counted and verified.

Maduro said the US wants to interfere with Venezuela’s internal affairs and wants to come in to observe, but the authorities from Venezuela cannot go to the US to observe what happens there during elections.

“We can’t go there to see if their system is good, but they want to come here…we sent back observers…” he stressed while noting, “they are going to respect the outcome…”.

Maduro took up office in 2013 and heads the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela; PSUV).

His main competition in the Sunday July 28 poll is Edmundo González Urrutia who is representing the Unitary Platform, the main opposition political alliance.

Maduro said that even before the election is conducted, entities who are against the PSUV have already begun claiming fraud.