Opposition announces that its polling station witnesses have been accredited “in their entirety”

The opposition coalition represented by presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who has the support of María Corina Machado, reported on Wednesday that it managed to accredit 99.5% of its witnesses for the presidential elections on July 28.

These witnesses are responsible for representing their political parties and candidates in the activities that take place at the polling stations and are considered key to ensuring the transparency of the process.

“A button has just been opened for the reprinting of credentials at the National Electoral Council, which is a citizen achievement and an achievement of this campaign command,” said Delsa Solórzano, the Command with Venezuela’s main witness before the Venezuelan electoral body.

“The aim was to prevent us from being able to accredit witnesses (…) until today the National Electoral Council had not included in the system the possibility of mass printing of credentials,” he said, explaining the impossibility of accrediting witnesses one by one manually.

“Thanks to our volunteers, we have managed to obtain the credentials of all the witnesses who will be at the 30,206 polling stations across the country,” candidate González Urrutia previously announced.

On Tuesday, the opposition had denounced that the country’s electoral body had implemented mechanisms that prevented it from accrediting 100% of the witnesses for its candidate, a 74-year-old retired ambassador who was named standard-bearer of the coalition of opposition parties.

The polling stations are due to be set up this Friday and witnesses need their credentials to participate in this stage of the process.

Witnesses can report irregularities and obtain copies of the minutes with the results.

Political organisations, groups of voters and candidates acting on their own initiative have the right to appoint one main witness and two substitutes for each polling station.

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