Adds CNE reaction to fraud allegation.
The company that supplied the electronic voting technology used in every Venezuelan election since 2004 said official results of the 30 July constituent assembly election were manipulated.
The government electoral authority CNE's turnout figures for the 30 July Constituent Assembly vote in Venezuela were tampered with, Smartmatic's chief executive Antonio Mugica said in London today. The company's systems showed a "discrepancy" of over 1mn fewer votes with CNE's official results, which can only be clarified with an independent audit, he said.
CNE president Tibisay Lucena said on 30 July that just over 8mn ballots were cast to elect a 545-member constitutional assembly.
Lucena today dismissed Smartmatic's allegations as the "irresponsible and unprecedented opinion of a company that only provides technical services and nothing more."
The election fraud allegations raised by Smartmatic could increase internal and external pressures on Maduro and his close political and military associates to cancel plans to abolish the country's 1999 Bolivarian constitution enacted under late president Hugo Chavez and install a dictatorship. They could also undermine the Maduro government's efforts to convince foreign investors that the constitutional reforms will guarantee they can safely commit billions of dollars in new spending in oil, gas and other strategic sectors, including coal and coltan mining.
The CNE has used Smartmatic, a Venezuelan-owned company, in all elections since the 2004 referendum, including President Nicolas Maduro's election in April 2013 and the national assembly elections of December 2015 that gave the opposition democratic coalition (MUD) a two-thirds majority in the legislature.
Smartmatic's office in Caracas was closed today, but a company spokesperson said Mugica ordered 20 Smartmatic technicians based in Caracas to leave the country before alleging from London that the CNE had committed electoral fraud.
National assembly president Julio Borges demanded that attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz launch an immediate criminal investigation of Lucena and fellow CNE board members vice president Sandra Oblitas, Socorro Hernandez and Tania D'Amelio.
"These individuals committed the crime of lying and altering the electoral results," Borges said.
If the constituent assembly was elected fraudulently, then all constitutional reforms and joint ventures it approves by default would be illegal and unconstitutional, Caracas-based economist Robert Bottome tells Argus. If the US administration concurs that it was fraudulent it could "stiffen opinions in the state department and White House with regard to expanding sanctions from individuals to include companies like (state-owned) PdV," Bottome added.
PdV needs to raise as much as $26bn to meet plans to invest over $51bn from 2017-2025 to boost the Orinoco oil belt's extra-heavy crude output from 1.3mn b/d currently to 3.7mn b/d.
"PdV will have a difficult time finding $25bn of foreign investment if the investors have even the slightest doubt about their legal exposure in Venezuela," an official with the Maracaibo-based oil services chamber (CPV) tells Argus.
The official vote count could be off even further. Internal CNE figures disclosed separately by dissident electoral officials suggest that barely 3.7mn ballots were cast, or about 4.7mn fewer votes than the CNE's official tally of 8mn votes.
The opposition coalition's voting station monitors estimated total turnout at less than 3mn voters nationally. In contrast, over 7.6mn voters cast ballots rejecting the constituent assembly on 16 July in an opposition-organized popular plebiscite that also called for immediate general elections to replace Maduro.
CNE rector Luis Rondon, the only independent official on the electoral authority's five-member board, said he "cannot guarantee the consistency and veracity of the results offered" by Lucena. "I am absolutely sure that those numbers are not correct. What was announced was a mockery of the people."
Rondon also accused Lucena of willfully violating all the electoral authority's rules and procedures for fair and transparent elections.
