The Venezuelan deputy minister for anti-blockade policies, William Castillo, has warned that now that there are ten days before the presidential elections, international media is intensifying its media warfare against Chavismo and Venezuela.
Castillo condemned the fact that this Wednesday, July 17, a group of international media outlets are predicting an outcome for the presidential elections, scheduled for July 28, in which they claim there will be fraud in Venezuela.
“We are talking about The Guardian in the United Kingdom, El País in Spain, The New York Times and The Washington Post in the United States, and other international news agencies,” the official said, adding that this mainstream media attack is based on the fact that these outlets are seeking to create a narrative that the opposition will win the elections “in an overwhelming way” and that as a result there would be inevitable fraud in Venezuela.
William Castillo said that this narrative is particularly curious because if they say that there will be fraud in the country, “it is because they are expecting a different result at the polls to the narrative they are putting out,” meaning that in reality even mainstream media knows President Maduro will result victorious.
Medios internacionales ya están cantando fraude: @planwac alerta a pocos días de las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela pic.twitter.com/IMohY7AZHb
— La iguana TV (cuenta alternativa) (@teleiguana) July 17, 2024
International and national electoral experts, many of them non-sympathetic to socialism or Chavismo, have explained over the years that the Venezuelan electoral system is almost bulletproof and among the best in the world. In the last 20 years, no evidence of fraud has been filed against the National Electoral Council, the Venezuelan branch in charge of elections.
The deputy minister also explained that this media warfare is intended to influence public opinion, to foster a false perception of Venezuelan reality in order to justify their refusal to recognize the results and to endorse the violence of those who are going to claim fraud after election day. None of these news agencies have presented any evidence to prove these claims, “which are based solely on so-called anonymous sources,” he added.
“We are warning the world, we want to draw attention to this new operation to create a false perception of the election results in Venezuela and the world, rendering invisible the rallies, the public support, the normal development of our defined electoral process,” he stated, explaining that there will be more than a thousand international observers from political parties, former presidents, and parliamentarians.
Thursday trends
Social media in Venezuela woke up the morning of this Thursday, July 18, with trends and hashtags targeting a news piece by CNN claiming that President Maduro allegedly announced that “there will be a bloodshed in Venezuela if he doesn’t win the elections,” when in reality President Maduro said that he is a warranty of peace in Venezuela, and that if the “fascist right would ascend to power, then an armed people’s revolution will be inevitable, a civil war that we will be not be able to stop.”
Simultaneously, far-right politician María Corina Machado, from Barquisimeto, Lara state, spread a video on social media condemning an alleged “attempt against her life,” in which she displayed two SUVs she uses to mobilize her followers around the country, as she is the one actually running political rallies instead of the nominal far-right candidate Edmundo González.
In the video, Machado is seen showing two SUVs covered in paint, one of which has a caption reading “No + Bloqueo [no more blockade].” She also showed what she claimed was evidence of sabotage to one of the SUV’s brakes and the alleged emptying of the oil of the other one.
Many Chavistas on social media began to question the veracity of Machado’s claims, as this is not the first time she launched these kinds of accusations. Others pointed at a security camera that can be seen in one of the houses next to the SUVs (in Machado’s video) and wondered why there was not a request to present the security camera footage to clearly see who was behind the alleged attack in reality. Later, other social media users explained that the neighborhood where Machado was sleeping is a privileged, fenced, and guarded neighborhood with security guards in the entrance and countless security cameras.
As Machado has a decade-long history of fabricating alleged attacks against herself, many Chavistas demanded that Venezuelan authorities request an investigation first to see if Machado’s claims were real, and that if that is not the case, to initiate an investigation for falsifying a criminal act, which is a crime under Venezuelan law.