Venezuelan opposition fears regime allies may "sabotage" vote machines

A member of the opposition election team in Venezuela claimed on 3 April that one or perhaps more members of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) backing Acting President Nicolás Maduro's presidential election on 14 April, could "sabotage" vote machines for having an access code, though apparently results could not be changed with that code. This was apparently the "grave" matter the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles had earlier said he would divulge. Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, coordinator of the Simón Bolivar Commando (Comando Simón Bolívar) backing Capriles said opposition technicians noted during an inspection on 30 March that a technician of the PSUV was "able to activate a voting machine as he was in possession of the code" needed to start or run the system, Globovisión reported. "This key cannot be in the hands of political organizations," he told a press conference in Caracas, adding however that the code did not allow its holder to access voters' identities or change results. It could "affect the functioning of the machines...it can sabotage the equipment and make it defective," he said. The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE) Sandra Oblitas replied on state television on 4 April that the election process in Venezuela was "absolutely inviolable, invulnerable and incorruptible," and warned "one must be cautious about observations made and their tone...those who made these observations were obliged to recognize the system's security," the official AVN news agency reported. She said technicians of the political parties checked the system "daily." It was not immediately clear if international observers would be watching the elections. On 3 April the head of the Organization of American States (OEA) José Miguel Insulza said the Venezuelan government had "unfortunately" not invited the OEA as observers. He told Spain's EFE in Madrid that while the quality of elections had improved in Latin America, Venezuela was among cases where the state apparatus was used to favour "a particular candidate." "The problem will not be on voting day...my concern is not over fraud if one may use that word, the concern is that a government and the opposition are not talking. There is no political dialogue" he said, or "relationship between political forces."