| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Venezuela Election Official: Maduro Victory will Stand despite Audit |
| 2013-04-22 |
| [An Nahar] A top election official warned the opposition Saturday against raising "false expectations" over an audit of Venezuela's presidential election, saying it cannot overturn President Nicolas Maduro's win. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles accepted the expanded audit in lieu of a vote-by-vote recount on the eve of Maduro's swearing-in Friday, helping to ease tensions that had led to eight deaths in post-election protests. Capriles on Saturday said his campaign, which announced it had formed a team to act as witnesses to the audit, was preparing for a protracted challenge to the results of the April 14 elections but expressed confidence that the truth would prevail. But Sandra Oblitas, the vice president of the National Election Council, told a presser the audit could not change the outcome of the election, and the result could only be challenged before the Supreme Court. "It is not the audit that is going to produce a different result," she said. Oblitas urged the opposition "not to create false expectations over what is a technical audit that has been done before and that in no way overturns electoral results." She said that the review, which is to take 30 days, would involve comparisons of paper receipts of electronic votes casts with the electronic tallies, while Capriles and his aides indicated they would be seeking other voting records as well. The latest turn came amid a contentious start to the new administration, with the opposition accusing the government of mass arrests of protesters around the country and harassing public employees suspected of voting for Capriles. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Of course the victory will stand - Hugo already set the pattern. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2013-04-22 02:29 |