2013 Early Venezuela Presidential Election

[Zanas]

Also, I heard there had been lots of talk about Chavez dying of some kind of poisoning that induced his cancer... Are the chavist side still mentioning it ? Using it ?

[Zanas]

The problem is the more there are polls that show Capriles ahead, even if they are opposition-owned, the more the establishment in place will be inclined to rig the election. Fear is a powerful pulsion... I hope this goes well, in one way or the other. Venezuela doesn't need a civil war right now. Or ever...

[Zanas]

I'm not trying to be the moderate hero here, but I wanted to ask what exactly are we basing ourselves on to judge the process rigged ? This is a real question.

I haven't been following the thread live because I was in bed then at work, and I'm only reading the whole of it now, and frankly I don't see what's changed compared to any other election before that.

Rumors on Twitter had the opposition victorious : we've seen that before, right ? They gave results where they had 600,000 votes more : pretty sure we also saw this, although I don't know where their figures come from.

Are we relying on the only fact that Capriles has been called to meet military representants ? I agree this is weird and surely not a good sign, but are there other tangible signs ?

I mean, everyone was like "the opposition has won, clearly, as they are all over on twitter about it, and so the Chavistas are not calling victory because they wait to see how they can rig the election". Alright.

But how can we say the situation is not "the results are razor-thin, so the regime doesn't want to call victory too soon because they know they will be severely judged by the entire international press, and so the opposition feels confident enough to be all over twitter saying they won, and asking for a recount when the figures are published" ?

Frankly, from I have read right now, both situations seem equally plausible. I mean, if you haven't convinced yourself one way or the other beforehand. And I'll admit this was a rigged election if presented with further elements.

And one last thing : to those complaining about them not publishing results precinct by precinct while counting, well we never did that in France either, we publish the whole bunch when it's finished, and I guess our elections are quite reliable. So that's really not a good marker of good or bad democracy.