Venezuela election monitors asked to review election tally

CARACAS: The National Electoral Council (NEC) in Venezuela has been asked to complete an audit of the electoral process after Sunday’s vote, said the head of the campaign for the National Constituent Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez.

The move came as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro swore in the 545-member assembly tasked to amend the constitution on Wednesday.

The swearing-in followed an election for the assembly on Sunday which was boycotted by opposition parties. They claimed the president was trying to consolidate power.

Maduro called for a constituent assembly in May to amend the constitution in a bid to overcome a political crisis that has paralysed the country, but which seems to have deepened political divisions.

Rodriguez said the only valid results of the election were those provided by the NEC, which originally counted 8 089 320 votes.

Maduro said he had asked for the count.

Earlier Antonio Mugica, the director of Smartmatic, a Venezuelan technological platform for voting, said it had detected “manipulation of the participation data”.

Mugica claimed to have identified “a difference between the announced figure and the number produced by the system”.

Rodriguez said there could be strong pressure on the Smartmatic company’s leadership by international powers.

He referred to inconsistencies in the “war of figures” between opposition leaders, whose data on a supposed electoral fraud contradict each other. – teleSUR and Xinhua