In a meeting of the Board of Directors, specially convened for this purpose, the Electoral Power, the Public Power of the Venezuelan State, autonomous and independent, as established in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, agreed to address to the national and international public opinion in order to express its most categorical rejection to the unilateral coercive measures dictated by the Council of Foreign Affairs of the European Union on February 22, 2021, directed against nineteen (19) high officials and magistrates of the Venezuelan State, for which it expresses the following considerations.
In the first place, this National Electoral Council reiterates its role as the governing body of the Electoral Power enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Its main mission, constitutionally mandated, is to ensure and facilitate the free and absolute expression of popular sovereignty of the Venezuelan People, through the exercise of their right to vote, for which they will exclude with all the instruments and resources at their disposal any foreign claim to interfere or condition their constitutional and legal responsibilities.
Second, these measures adopted by the aforementioned European Organization, without any basis, both in Public International Law and in International Human Rights Law, are aimed at those who constitute themselves as guarantors of the effective validity and implementation of the most high public responsibilities of our country. This is how, in an irrational and excessive way, it is intended to sanction the authors or those responsible for decisions or actions aimed, among others, to make effective the human rights to democratic political participation and the materialization of electoral processes so that the people can choose, sovereignly and independently, their own future and development.
For this Electoral Power, it is absolutely revealing the temporal coincidence that exists between the eve of the holding of new electoral processes in our country, constitutionally foreseen, and the moment in which these infamous unilateral coercive measures are adopted, making it clear that their true intention is none other than attacking the democratic will of our people, trying to obstruct the exercise of their full political sovereignty. However, we are sure that once again, as it happened two hundred years ago, this glorious freedom-forging people will defeat the shameful claims of foreign domination.
Thirdly, the Electoral Power observes that the decision of the aforementioned European Organization manifests an indisputable manipulation of values and principles of universal acceptance, such as Democracy and the rule of law, as means of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign and Independent country. In addition, based on absolutely vague and generic assessments, the European Organization sanctions, unilaterally and without the slightest guarantee of due process, those mainly responsible for the effective validity and realization of those values in the Venezuelan Nation.
Fourthly, this Electoral Power must emphasize against the unusual assertion of the European Organization that electoral participation in the parliamentary elections of December 6, 2020 was scarce, which deliberately ignored that the fierce Venezuelan people are guided by the values of a “Participatory and leading democracy”.
Fifth, the intolerable gravity of the application of this type of measures, which violates the right to equality of the States and which violates, as previously expressed, the most basic principles guaranteed by International Law and Human Rights, lead this National Electoral Council, to irreducibly, categorically reject the illegal and illegitimate, ideologies or political behaviors that put humanity at risk, constituting a massive attack on the dignity of the peoples.
Once again, this Electoral Power by organ of its National Electoral Council, reiterates the democratic vocation, commitment, unrestricted respect for the Constitution and the laws of the Republic, as well as the absolute recognition that the non-transferable sovereignty resides in the sovereign people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and not over any authority, body or power outside our territory.
In the city of Caracas, on the twenty-fourth day of February 2021.
INDIRA ALFONZO IZAGUIRRE
PRESIDENTA
LEONARDO MORALES POLEO
VICEPRESIDENTE
TANIA D’AMELIO CARDIET
RECTORA ELECTORAL
GLADYS GUTIÉRREZ ALVARADO
RECTORA ELECTORAL
JOSÉ LUIS GUTIÉRREZ PARRA
RECTOR ELECTORAL
GUSTAVO ADOLFO PULIDO CARDIER
SECRETARIO GENERAL