Venezuela Recalls Parliament to Discuss Anti-Hate, Anti-Fascist Laws

Mexico City, Mexico, August 13, 2024 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez announced that the upcoming parliamentary recess would be suspended to discuss a series of bills requested by President Nicolás Maduro to address the dissemination of hate speech and far-right ideas.

“We have decided to suspend the parliamentary recess … to approve a package of laws that [the president has] requested to be able defend our population from expressions of social hatred, terrorism and the dissemination of fascist ideas on social networks,” said Rodríguez. 

The decision to recall parliament came after Maduro’s announcement that he would create a commission against fascism, hatred and violence following a meeting of the government cabinet alongside the military high command in Caracas on Monday. 

Maduro said the commission would be tasked with investigating the role of social networks and the media “to bring societies to states of commotion and justify coups d’état, interventions and destabilization.”

The parallel announcements are a response to unrest in Venezuela following the July 28 election that opposition leaders have alleged were fraudulent. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Maduro the winner of the election with 51.95 percent (6.4 million votes) compared to 43.18 percent (5.3 million votes) for US-backed opposition candidate Edmundo González. 

Venezuela’s hardline factions refused to recognize those results, instead claiming that González won by a landslide and set up a website, purportedly including more than 80 percent of voting tallies from electoral centers, to defend its claim. 

Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Monday that the unrest, which saw pockets of disturbances known as guarimbas in the days immediately following the vote, led to 25 deaths and 192 people injured, with Saab reporting that 97 of them were state security forces.

Discontent over the election results has found a large audience online, with heated debates on social networks as well as reports of threats. Maduro ordered the temporary suspension of X, formerly Twitter, and called on Venezuelans to delete the WhatsApp messaging service.

The post-electoral context likewise saw the Venezuelan state targeted in the digital realm..

Venezuelan Minister for Science and Technology Gabriela Jiménez said that 25 institutions, ranging from the CNE to universities and media, were victims of cyberattacks since July 28. According to Jiménez, the vast majority of the attacks were denial of service, or DDoS, but also included other attacks such as BGP hijacking. 

“On the weekend we observed the hijacking of [state-run telephone and internet service provider] Cantv IPs. The IPs are falsified and when users want to have links with any of the services, they get a completely different portal and the servers collapse altogether,” reported Jiménez in Monday’s meeting.

In response, Maduro signed a presidential decree for the creation of the National Cybersecurity Council that will be tasked with providing an institutional response to cyberattacks. 

The head of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, has claimed that the electoral authority was the victim of a hacking operation that affected vote-tallying and publishing operations. The CNE has not made results publicly available but has handed over its records to the country’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). Technology experts have called for thorough explanations of the cyberattacks since the electoral data transmission is designed to be offline and encrypted.

The dispute over the election outcome now lies in the hands of the TSJ, which opened a probe following a request by Maduro to review and validate the results. Nearly all representatives from political parties and presidential candidates in the July 28 election have appeared before the Electoral Chamber to testify and submit voting records. 

The only candidate who has failed to heed the court’s order is González, who despite claiming to have proof of their victory did not comply with the judicial order to hand over the physical records in his campaign team’s possession.

“It is noted that the former candidate Edmundo González Urrutia did not attend, therefore, he did not comply with the summons order, disregarding the highest court, consequently, he did not comply with the delivery of the tally sheets or any other material,” said Supreme Court President Caryslia Rodríguez on Saturday.

Rodríguez stated that court-appointed analysts will now review both the electoral data and cyberattack evidence. She emphasized that the court’s ruling on the matter would be final.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.