george писал(а):Ты интересовался, как выборы проходят там?
Конечно интересовался!
https://www.reddit.com/r/BreadTube/comm ... venezuela/
Hello, I'm Dr. Alan MacLeod. I have studied Venezuela and the media for the last 7 years. I am a journalist and academic who specializes in propaganda and fake news, and one thing I have specifically looked at is the media coverage of Venezuela, both journalistically and academically. I published a book on the subject and I also just edited a book I co-wrote with Noam Chomsky and a bunch of other great people about propaganda in the Internet age that is coming out soon.
- Is there any truth the US claim that Maduro has never won the presidency in a 'free and fair' election? This situation is so hard for me to follow with such heavy propaganda from both sides.
- I wrote about this in chapter four of my book. Maduro has won two Presidential elections: 2013 and 2018.
The 2013 Elections
Nicolas Maduro came to power in 2013, after he won the vote 51% to 49%, winning 15 of 23 states.
The Venezuelan elections are perhaps the most heavily monitored in the world, and in order to vote you need your picture ID card. Once you have been checked you vote on an electronic machine which reads your thumb print. So you need to pass 2 tests in order to vote. The machine also gives you a paper ballot which you put in a locked box. The paper ballots are checked to see if they match the electronic vote. They must match perfectly. In 2013 it was accurate to 99.98% (22 votes). This is watched over by international monitors and party members from all sides. This system is considered ““in line with its advanced technological level” according to the EU and Jimmy Carter said “I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world . . . they have a very wonderful voting system.”
Opposition/US media/Us government claims:
The opposition/US government claims that the elections are not clean because the government has control over the media and pressures the public into voting for them. Yet a report by the Washington-based, Washington funded Carter Center, who are paid by the US to go and monitor their enemies’ elections, and are staffed with anti-Chavez staff declared the election exemplary. In fact, the Carter Center found that the opposition candidate received nearly double the coverage of Maduro in the media, most of it being positive, with the majority of Maduro’s coverage being negative. Furthermore, a report from AGB Nielsen (of the Neilsen ratings) found that state TV’s share of the market was under 10%. The Carter Center also found that less than one per cent of Venezuelans reported feeling pressured into voting- and twice as many reported being pressured to vote for the opposition than Maduro.
Every single country in the world acknowledged the 2013 elections as free and fair, except the United States. Yet the US media, by a 12:1 ratio, presented the elections as unclean or worse, a sham. The Washington Post stated,
“Unsurprisingly, polls show that Mr. Maduro will win this grossly one-sided contest. If by some chance he does not, the regime is unlikely to accept the results” (April 12th).
Even the UK media displayed a 3:1 ratio of unclean to clean.
2018 Elections
I wrote a paper about the 2018 elections and how the media covered them. First of all, the reason there were elections in the first place was because the US and the opposition demanded the 2019 elections be brought forward. Surprisingly, Maduro accepted. Then the US and opposition demand they be postponed. So Maduro accepted that too. Then much of the opposition decided to boycott the election anyway, which resulted in them not registering for it (hence the story that they were “barred” from competing). The government asked the UN to come to inspect the elections, but the US demanded they did not because they would “validate” them. The US actually tried to intimidate the main opposition candidate, Henri Falcon from running.
As far as I am aware, three international election observation teams observed the 2018 elections.
The report of the African Nations’ delegation stated The Venezuelan people who chose to participate in the electoral process of May 20 were not subject to any external pressures, and carried out their right to vote in a peaceful and civil manner which we commend... As such, we implore the international community to abide by international law and the principles of self-determination and recognize what we consider to be a free, fair, fully transparent and sovereign election.
The Caribbean preliminary report mission’s report was similarly positive.
The Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA), consisting of senior election co-ordinators, most from countries openly hostile to Venezuela, praised the “high level of security and efficiency”, noting that the vote reflected “the will of its citizens, freely expressed in the ballot box”.
There were also other senior figures observing the election, like former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero who said "I do not have any doubt about the voting process. It is an advanced automatic voting system.” Or ex-President of Ecuador Rafael Correa who said "The Venezuelan elections are developing with absolute normalcy. I’ve attended four polling stations. There is a permanent flow of citizenship, with short waiting and voting times. Very modern system with double control. From what I’ve seen, [it’s] impeccable organization."
In fact, the strongest criticism from those three reports was probably that there were some voting stations were not on the ground floor, meaning some voters had trouble accessing them.
However, the international reaction was mixed this time, with much of the West condemning the elections. The EU, for example, expressed concerns. Nevertheless, as far as I am aware, I have quoted and given links to every observation team's study of the 2018 election. As one commenter has pointed out, Leopoldo Lopez, a key opposition figure, is under house arrest. However, if I may, I think it is deceitful of some people to throw out factoids without explaining the context. You hear "opposition leader in jail" in the media and think "wow, that's fucked up". However, Lopez is under house arrest because he led a wave of terroristic violence in 2014 aimed at overthrowing the government, that included beheading passers-by, bombing schools and kindergartens and attacking doctors. Lopez also once kidnapped the Minister of the Interior on live television. It is a pretty open-and-shut case that he is guilty.
Nevertheless, the election system itself has integrity. The media likes to say it is totally corrupt but didn't seem to complain when the election system delivered a resounding victory for the opposition in the 2015 elections. Somehow that one was ok.
Edit: I should also note that the US (and the media) has claimed every election in Venezuela since 2000 is fraudulent.
