MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK wants Caracas to release the minutes “for Chávez's legacy's sake”

CFK said she was glad María Corina Machado had come out of hiding so quickly to stage Saturday's rally

Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) Saturday urged Venezuelan authorities to release the minutes of July 28's presidential elections for the sake of Hugo Chávez's legacy, thus joining the international community's pressure on Caracas to produce the evidence substantiating President Nicolás Maduro's alleged win.

“I ask, not only for the Venezuelan people but also for the opposition, for democracy, for Hugo Chávez's own legacy, that the minutes be published,” said CFK during a conference at the National Institute of Political Training (INFP) of Mexico's ruling party MoReNa. She thus echoed a joint statement from Presidents Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO of Mexico), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (of Brazil), and Gustavo Petro (of Colombia).

“Faced with the clear and concrete problem that has arisen since the last presidential elections, I fully believe in and share the communiqué signed by AMLO, Lula, and Gustavo Petro on August 1” calling on the Venezuelan electoral authorities to “move forward expeditiously and make public the data broken down by polling station”, respecting the sovereignty of the will of the people.

CFK also ratified “the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other countries,... which is to recognize political and cultural sovereignty” to each nation. “We will be the most unequal continent, but if we also have confrontations or become the scene of global conflicts outside the region, we are wounded. And it is within this framework of utopia for peace that we have to address the problem of Venezuela”, she added at the closing of the international course “Political and Electoral Reality of Latin America.”

She also underlined that Caracas needed to publish the minutes “for the sake of Hugo Chávez's own legacy ... so that international public opinion, the opposition, and the people of Venezuela can scrutinize.”

“Responsibility in international relations is vital. Beyond sympathies or antipathies, I heard the head of Venezuela's national electoral council read out the results of the 96.87% vote count. The council itself, which is a constitutional power, reported that it had been hacked and they did not have the minutes to be able to publish them,” CFK also acknowledged.

“It is also evident that if it has been possible to address this scrutiny it is because there is a double system of computer support that was hacked, but support for minutes that were signed and sent to the national electoral council,” she went on.

“Our region was born of the utopia of freedom in the 19th century. That freedom, not the one they want to sell us today, was a struggle of ideas that took place in the region, we did not have countries, we were a will for freedom and emancipation. That is where the concept of the homeland was forged,” she also pointed out.

“We did very well with the utopia of freedom, but how did we do with the utopia of equality? Our continent continues to be the most unequal”, she pointed out and indicated that “the struggle of ideas ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall,” she stressed.

“Miraculously, in the first decade of the 21st century, popular, national, and democratic governments have emerged in South America. The first of these was Hugo Chávez in 1999,” CFK argued. She then highlighted the governments of Lula (Brazil), Néstor Kirchner (Argentina), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), which were different from past experiences albeit with “a common point, since all these leaders resembled their peoples.”

“When it was not possible to confront them with military interventions, the judicialization of politics emerged as a method of stigmatization, persecution, and proscription of those who lead or represent these movements,” she elaborated.

“I was very worried because yesterday the main leader of the opposition - María Corina Machado - was in hiding, according to what she had reported. Today I saw her leading a march in Caracas, so fortunately she has had a short time in hiding, which is very good. It is very ugly, very bad, and unsafe to go underground. We are flattered that she has been able to end that period,” she regarding Machado's comments in The Wall Street Journal that she had “feared for her life and her freedom.”

CFK also recalled “the solidarity of almost all of Latin America, except for one” country in the 1982 South Atlantic war over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands with the United Kingdom. At that time, CFK insisted, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance died out because the United States sided with the UK. “What did the OAS do? Well, thank you. Then, it played a direct role in the coup against Evo Morales. As we say in my country, the topping on the cake; so, to hear the OAS talk about dictatorships and coups d'état... finally, at some point, the truth comes out,” she concluded.