VENEZUELAN ELECTORAL COUNCIL EYES THE FUTURE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CARACAS 003956

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/AND AND WHA/CAR
NSC FOR CBARTON
USCINCSO ALSO FOR POLAD
STATE PASS USAID FOR DCHA/OTI

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/28/2014
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM VE
SUBJECT: VENEZUELAN ELECTORAL COUNCIL EYES THE FUTURE


Classified By: Mark Wells, Acting Political Counselor,
for Reason 1.4(b).

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Summary
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1. (C) National Electoral Council (CNE) Director Jorge
Rodriguez is the odds-on favorite to replace outgoing CNE
President Francisco Carrasquero, who will move to the
recently-expanded Supreme Court (TSJ) in January.
Carrasquero's departure will leave two vacancies on the CNE's
five-person board that the TSJ will need to fill. The CNE
continues to make personnel changes, replacing career
employees with persons loyal to President Hugo Chavez.
Preparations have begun for three electoral events in 2005.
CNE Director Oscar Battaglini proposed to use Venezuela's
Smartmatic voting machines in Haiti and Honduras, but
Smartmatic officials indicate the idea was a non-starter.
End summary.

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Changes At The Top
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2. (C) National Electoral Council (CNE) President Francisco
Carrasquero was named in early December to one of the new
magistrate positions in the Constitutional Chamber of the
Supreme Court (TSJ) that was created by the TSJ law passed
earlier this year. An illness (some say heart problem)
prevented Carrasquero from being sworn-in with the other
appointees on December 15, and his swearing-in was
re-scheduled for January 17. Carrasquero's departure means
there will be two vacant seats on the CNE's five-person
board, the other left when the CNE's pro-opposition Vice
President Ezequiel Zamora resigned in protest in September
over a dispute involving the regional elections. (Note:
When the National Assembly failed to reach a two-thirds
majority to name the CNE board in 2003, the TSJ's
Constitutional Chamber found the Assembly in omission and
appointed the five board members with a 3-2 advantage to the
GOV. Electoral law stipulates that vacancies be filled by
alternates, but Zamora's alternates were viewed as too
sympathetic to the opposition. CNE Director Jorge Rodriguez
said Carrasquero's replacement will once again be decided by
the Constitutional Chamber rather than the National Assembly.)


3. (C) Rodriguez is widely believed to be a shoo-in for
Carrasquero's job. As the head of the National Electoral
Board (JNE),the electoral operations committee subordinate
to the CNE board, Rodriguez was the organizing force behind
the August 15 presidential recall referendum and the October
31 regional elections. Chavez opponents complain that
Rodriguez, a psychiatrist by training, manipulated both
elections to ensure GOV victories. Jorge Tirado, a
consultant for the Smartmatic consortium that provides the
CNE's electronic voting system, told poloff December 20 that
Rodriguez is lobbying for the job. Tirado said Rodriguez and
Carrasquero do not get along and rarely consult with one
another outside of the board meetings. Tirado said Rodriguez
is pushing for his key assistant (and alternate director),
Tibisay Lucena, to succeed him as head of the JNE. Tirado
said another alternate, Esther Gauthier, has political
backing from the National Assembly to fill the Vice President
position. Tirado said that neither candidate had the job
locked up and predicted the debate would continue until after
Carrasquero departs.

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CNE Faces Heavy Schedule
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4. (C) Tirado said the CNE is planning for three electoral
events in 2005. The recall referendum against nine
opposition National Assembly deputies and the election of the
governor of Delta Amacuro State and six make-up elections for
mayoral seats will take place April 10 (using Tirado's
tentative planning dates). Elections for city councils and
neighborhood councils ("parroquias") are tentatively set for
July 31. This election, Tirado said, will encompass
thousands of positions and tens of thousands of candidates,
making it the most difficult from a technical standpoint.
Lastly, National Assembly elections are planned for December

5.

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But CNE Continues To Clean House
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5. (C) Prior to the presidential recall referendum, the
pro-Chavez majority of the CNE board began to replace career
employees, either forcing them into retirement or firing
them. Pedro Valladares, the leader of the CNE workers' union
(aligned with the opposition),told poloff December 21 that
260 employees have been forcibly retired and 110 dismissed
since September 2003. Prior to Chavez, Valladares said,
political parties filled CNE positions on a loose quota
system, with rotations in management jobs based on which
party was in power. Under Chavez, the CNE has been removing
those employees and replacing them with pro-Chavez loyalists,
he said. Valladares said some fired workers had successfully
contested their dismissals in administrative labor courts.
Work areas such as computer systems and the electoral
registry were "completely closed off" to all but a handful of
select employees, Valladares added.


6. (C) Valladares said that, despite the removal of career
employees, the number of total employees on the payroll had
increased from about 2,000 in September 2003 to about 4,000
today. Valladares, who sees payroll records as a part of his
union duties, said many new positions were added in regional
CNE offices in state capitals. In addition, Valladares said
that many of the temporary employees hired to process the
signatures collected by the opposition for the recall
referendum are still on the job, but do not have much to do.
He alleged that some people on the CNE payroll are phantom
employees and or do not work at CNE facilities. Valladares
said the workers received a 40-percent pay increase when the
new board was installed (which included the same increase for
board members),but he said no raises are contemplated for
this year. He said this had caused a morale problem among
workers, especially since the CNE received its full budget
for 2004 plus a supplemental, most of which went to purchases
of the Smartmatic electronic voting machines and Cogent
fingerprint capture system.

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CNE Thinks Internationally
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7. (C) Tirado confirmed that CNE Director Oscar Battaglini --
considered the most revolution-minded of CNE directors -- had
offered to lend a number of Venezuela's Smartmatic machines
to the OAS for upcoming elections in Haiti. Smartmatic Vice
President Bob Cook told poloff December 23, however, that
there had been no follow-up to the Battaglini proposal. Cook
said the company is, in fact, working independently from the
CNE with a Haitian consortium to sell the OAS and GOH with an
electronic voting system for Port-au-Prince using up to 6,000
voting machines. Tirado said he accompanied the CNE's Lucena
to Honduras to offer the machines and technical assistance
for the Honduran presidential elections in 2005. Tirado did
not believe the offer would work out, however, as the
machines will be needed in Venezuela about the same time for
the National Assembly elections. Tirado said a group of
Central American countries may instead collaborate on a World
Bank loan to purchase common election equipment, which
Smartmatic hopes to supply. Cook pointed out that any CNE
offer to lend equipment to a third country would require
Smartmatic participation, since the company still owns the
rights to most of the operating software.


8. (C) Tirado mentioned that the CNE owed Smartmatic more
than US$10 million for the additional machines purchased for
the regional elections, a result of Smartmatic's foregoing a
letter of credit to cover the sale. Cook said his company
plans to sell between 4,000 and 5,000 new voting machines to
the CNE in 2005. He said Smartmatic will roll out a new
voting machine early next year that will be cheaper than the
previous model. Smartmatic has yet to sign service contracts
with the CNE for the 2005 electoral events, but Cook said he
has no reason to expect his company would not win the
contracts.

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Comment
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9. (C) Chavez needs a compliant CNE open to manipulation to
maintain his grip on elected offices. Rodriguez is
intelligent, crafty, and particularly mean-spirited when it
comes to the opposition. Given the inability of the National
Assembly to fulfill its constitutional role of approving CNE
directors with a two-thirds majority, we expect the TSJ to
name Rodriguez to Carrasquero's position as well as the two
replacement directors. It is likely the replacements will be
Chavez sympathizers, giving Chavez a sure 4-1 vote on future
electoral questions. The CNE loaning out its voting machines
and giving technical assistance to other countries seems for
now to be a nascent concept. The idea probably surfaced as a
way to shore up the CNE's image both internationally and
domestically. The CNE's technical assistance to other
countries, however, may be also be a means to influence the
management of electoral processes throughout the region.

Brownfield