The IACHR recommended that the Venezuelan State “fully repair the human rights violations” of Henrique Capriles

Macri’s harsh criticism of the Venezuelan opposition 1:51 (CNN Spanish) — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) considered this Wednesday that in Venezuela “the right of Henrique Capriles to participate in conditions of equality was violated” during the presidential elections in Venezuela in 2013. The organization said in a document that the State of Venezuela violated rights enshrined in the Constitution and in the American Convention on Human Rights, and recommended that the Venezuelan State “fully repair the human rights violations of Capriles” On April 28, the IACHR, as a consultative body of the Organization of American States (OAS), had presented the Capriles case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding “the violation of various conventional rights during the 2013 presidential elections “. In the elections of April 14, 2013, Capriles was the candidate for the opposition facing Nicolás Maduro, who represented he sat the party in government after the death of then President Hugo Chávez Frías. After occupying second place by a difference of votes of 1.49%, Capriles requested an audit of the votes before the National Electoral Council (CNE). The same was carried out under conditions different from those required by the candidate and without his satisfaction being achieved before the mechanism, for which he filed an appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice. Both actions were rejected at the time by said organizations. The IACHR says that in its admissibility and merits report “it confirmed the existence of serious obstacles to the exercise of political rights in the country and retaliatory actions against the political opposition,” which according to the document “had their peak in 2013 Likewise, it concluded that there was a “lack of independence of the CNE, the body in charge of supervising the elections,” a situation that for the IACHR “directly and negatively affects the protection of political rights.” In its report, the commission points out that during the campaign “the inappropriate use of public resources to support the campaign of the ruling candidate, and a markedly inequitable access of the mass media of state communication” was observed. He also highlighted “multiple irregularities during the vote, a situation that was aggravated by the lack of control by the CNE.” The then governor of the state of Miranda and opposition leader, Henrique Capriles Radonski, kisses his vote during the municipal elections at a polling station in Caracas on December 8, 2013. Credit: Pedro GUZMAN/AFP via Getty Images On April 27 2017, Venezuela delivered a letter to the OAS on the orders of Nicolás Maduro to formalize the withdrawal of the organization, a measure that became effective in 2019. The IACHR is a main and autonomous body of the Organization of American States and its objective is promote the observance and defense of human rights in the region. CNN requested comments from the Ministry for Communication and Information, the National Electoral Council and the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela, without receiving a response so far. For Maduro, it was a victory in tribute to the late President Hugo Chávez and he stressed that the election was carried out with “an absolutely reliable and transparent electoral system.” In the act of proclamation of Maduro in 2013, Tibisay Lucena, then president of the National Electoral Council, responded to Capriles’s demands by saying that “that is his decision but that in Venezuela there is a rule of law that must be respected.” She added that the differences on the acts issued by the electoral body have their legal path and therefore the candidate must go to the corresponding instances”. Likewise, Lucena rejected the manual counting of 100% of the votes demanded by Capriles, assuring that it is a vulnerable manual count that, in her opinion, constituted a practice that damaged the will of voters in Venezuela for decades. Capriles reacted to the IACHR statement with a video of him on social networks, where he assures that he will consult with his lawyers before establishing a definitive position on the issue.