RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In a video message posted on Twitter, seven masked men said the attack was part of “Operation Sodom” – a reference to the biblical story which tells that the city of Sodom was destroyed by God because it was “sinful”.
The group justified the arson attack by accusing the National Electoral Council (CNE) of “violating the rights of the people through electoral fraud”. They also claimed responsibility for the arson of a state telecommunications center that was used in the elections in Valencia, Carabobo state.
The origins and links of the group, which calls itself the “Venezuelan Patriotic Front”, are still unclear. In the video message, it announces further actions against government supporters and leaders, which it declared to be “military targets”.
In a speech on Monday, the president of the constituent assembly, Diosdado Cabello, denounced the fire as a “terrorist attack”. Opposition leaders have not yet commented on this.
Another far-right opposition group, the “Soldados de Franelas ” (T-shirt soldiers) welcomed the actions of the “Patriotic Front” and stressed that they were “not yet finished”. This group had claimed responsibility for the drone attack on President Nicolás Maduro in August 2018.
According to the CNE, a massive fire last Saturday at the Filas de Mariche storage facility in the outskirts of Caracas destroyed 49,408 electronic voting machines, 582 computers, 400 electronic ballots, 49,232 fingerprint identification devices and 22,434 inverter modules. All these devices are kept under military and civil supervision between elections. The 1,500- square-meter facility was completely destroyed. No one was injured in the fire.
At a press conference on Sunday, CNE President Tibisay Lucena said that two prosecutors are in charge of the investigation and that “no suspicions were ruled out”.
The voting machines were manufactured by the multinational company Smartmatic. The CNE cancelled a maintenance and repair contract with the company in 2017, after the latter had raised “unfounded” accusations of fraud in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in July 2017. Since then, the electoral authority has neither updated its machine inventory nor signed a new manufacturing contract. The US government is threatening to impose sanctions on any foreign company that cooperates with the Electoral Council.
The CNE has supervised 24 elections since 1998. Elections to the National Assembly are planned for 2020, although the exact date has not yet been decided. Lucena assured that this year’s elections could not be affected: “If there are small groups who believe that this will end our constitutionally established electoral processes, they are completely wrong,” she said, “We have the ability, legal expertise, operational and logistical technology, 17 years of experience and human talent to ensure the electoral processes in Venezuela are as we know them: fast, transparent and reliable,” she continued.
Venezuela’s combined electronic and paper voting system has been described by independent international observers as one of the most reliable and transparent in the world. Nevertheless, discussions aimed at applying further consensual safeguards and renewing the leadership of the CNE were part of a dialogue agenda between the government and a number of minority opposition parties.