With four days to go until the presidential elections in Venezuela, the Cuban regime is showcasing its decision to send several of its henchmen to that country as a gesture of support for its allied dictator Nicolás Maduro.
In the midst of a muted unease about the election results, Havana watches with concern the growing support of millions of Venezuelans for the candidacy led by Edmundo González Urrutia and led by María Corina Machado.
Beyond the interference in Venezuela by agents of the Cuban G2, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), and the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) - denounced by the Organization of American States (OAS) and other international and non-governmental organizations - it is important to remember that Cuban companies and advisors were hired by Maduro to develop the electronic identity card and the digital systems for the participation and scrutiny of Venezuelan elections.
With control of the electoral system in its hands, the Cuban regime is a guarantee for chavismo, which, like Havana, wants to remain in power. But beyond this interference in the internal affairs of Venezuelans, the Cuban regime proudly sends prominent State Security agents like Raúl Antonio Capote, who attends the Venezuelan elections as an “international guest.”
Abel Prieto Jiménez, director of the Casa de las Américas, celebrated his presence in Caracas with a tweet in which he greeted "our troops" and stated that "they will never be able to take the victory away from the people of Bolívar and Chávez."
The photo of Capote alongside the Argentine sociologist and supporter of Latin American "leftist dictatorships," Atilio Borón, was sent by the Argentine journalist residing in Cuba, Graciela Ramírez, another fervent activist in favor of the expansion of socialism in the region.
Paradoxically, Prieto Jiménez shared the image in his tweet with the striking hashtag: #HandsOffVenezuela.
In 2007, companies of the Cuban regime signed an agreement with Bolivarian authorities for 172 million dollars to develop the Venezuelan electronic ID project. The Cuban company Albet Ingeniería y Sistemas sold the programs produced at the University of Informatics Sciences in Havana.
The agreement not only put Venezuelan data in Cuban hands but also opened the door for state-run companies on the island to participate as intermediaries and suppliers in the identity document market with chips. It also represented the ideal opportunity for the regime to expand its strategic horizons.
"These companies are part of a Cuban strategy to extend its intelligence networks in the region. They are actually a front for the G2, which allows them to control the systems for issuing identity documents, thereby enabling them to grant them to anyone," said Anthony Daquin, former advisor to the Ministry of the Interior of Venezuela, who was involved in the selection processes for providers of electronic ID and passport services, in 2013.
However, in May 2018, the Cuban writer and political scientist Carlos Alberto Montaner dismissed the involvement of "the Cuban hairy hand from a sinister computer center installed on the Island" in those elections.
"It was simpler, closer, and there were good Venezuelan technicians in charge of the dirty business. Once the voting was officially completed, the company Smartmatic, the electronic organizer of the elections, financed by chavismo, would obtain the real sum and calculate the size of the fraud necessary to 'win.' At that moment, virtual votes were being fabricated, scattered across the electoral geography, and added to the final count. If the opposition called for a manual recount, they would be given excuses or it would be denied, as happened to Henrique Capriles in 2013," he explained.
According to Montaner, "this was known with total certainty in August 2017, when Antonio Mugica, president of Smartmatic, now a serious company based in London, trying to escape its compromising chavista past, revealed that the elections to choose the illegal National Constituent Assembly had been fueled by a million false virtual votes."
Recently, the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, revealed that he was frightened to hear Maduro say that if he loses the elections next Sunday in Venezuela, there will be "a bloodbath" in his country. "I was scared by that statement," Lula told the EFE agency.
The Brazilian leader stated that he spoke with Maduro twice and warned him that "if he wants to help solve the problem of Venezuela's growth and the return of those who have left, he must respect the democratic process."
Lula clarified that, in democracy, "the one who loses takes a bath of votes, not a bath of blood," and that "Maduro has to learn that when you win you stay, and when you lose you go and prepare for other elections."
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