Esther Pineda G – Entrevista Voting access & participation in Venezue la's indigenous & Afrodiasporic communities. IntLawGrrls: Voces en el derecho internacional, la política y la práctica, 8 de Diciembre 2012 October 7, the general Election Day in Venezuela, falls on a Sunday. That day, in my capacity as an international election accompañamiento, or “accompaniment,” I traveled to many sites in Venezuela. Specifically, I visited eleven precincts across the eastern state of Monagas, along with two domestic observers, a Swiss human rights advocate, a Brazilian professor of international law, and two journalists from Chile and Uruguay. When we arrived at the remote indigenous Warao community of Mosú at 8:40 in the morning, we observed that 60% of thepeople in the community had already exercised their right to vote. Our delegation spoke with Santo Garcia, the elected administrator of the indigenous school in the town of Mosú. Garcia stated: ‘Every person who wants to exercise their vote has been able to do so…. As it says in the Constitution approved in 1999, every indigenous community needs to elect their representatives.’
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Voting access & participation in Venezuela's indigenous & Afrodiasporic
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7/29/2019 Voting access & participation in Venezuela's indigenous & Afrodiasporic
‘As a result, there has been a major consolidation of spaces for debate in a society in
which diverse opinions and thoughts were formerly silenced; now afrodescendent men
and women have the opportunity to express themselves and reflect on their own
situation and experiences, specifically those which have resulted in the massive
formulation of policy proposals and projects by and for diverse afrodescendent groups
and communities.’
In my view, as an observer this autumn of both the U.S. and the Venezuelan elections,
the clarity of the national standards, technical audits and accountability measures built
into Venezuela’s electoral process stand in stark contrast to the lack of transparency and
struggles with voter ID requirements and other forms of suppression in the United
States.
Socorro Hernánde z
CNE Director Socorro Hernández, herself elected by the Faculty of Law and Political
Sciences from Venezuela’s National Universities, has reflected on the ownership that
citizens in Venezuela maintain by participating directly in the auditing process throughthe “citizen’s audit,” or citizen vote verification process. After voting anonymously on
7/29/2019 Voting access & participation in Venezuela's indigenous & Afrodiasporic