President Carter and Secretary Gaviria press conference
Fraud in Venezuela would be very difficult to hide


The press conference just ended. Summary (and my interpretations):

Carter confirmed that last night when he visited the CNE tabulation of results was not taking place (implying that indeed Zamora declarations were accurate).

Carter and Gaviria tried to contact several times the CNE rectors. None replied. They thus let it know to their secretatries that they were on their way, apparently under the assumption that these would contact their respective bosses (in other words, Carrasquero and Rodriguez were avoiding the observers the same way that they were avoiding Zamora. The observers sensed that and went ahead anyway. Can anyone think it possible that either secretary was unable to reach his/her boss? On the day when the electoral results were coming in?)

The impasse on the failed meeting was solved by Carter stating "a misunderstanding" (there are more important issues to deal with than whether you guys were hiding from us).

Carter and Gaviria separatedly reminded that they have all the closing documents for each of the three days of validation, as do the opposition and the government officials. Thus any significant discrepancies between official results and their data will have to be explained (Basically Carter and Gaviria announced that they know the results and any different result will be a tough thing to explain).

They also reminded that the validation process had been duly negotiated, that many of the problems that appeared during the November collection that "unduly delayed" the emission of these results have been incorporated in the new rules (that is, there is NO REASON to change the rules, if there is any rpoblem it is the CNE fault and they cannot blame thrid parties to use that as an excuse for some backroom cooking of the results).

The best was at the end when Carter announced that last night he had talked lengthily to Chavez again and this one assured him that he would respect the results (Chavez has been caught, he will have to accept that the signatures are in and he will have to come with something up such as resigning and calling an early election to avoid a Recall Election).