Expert Dismisses the Results of Venezuelan Opposition Primaries

On Tuesday, Nelson Rampersad, a member of the Primary Technical Commission, explained in detail the inconsistencies that exist in the figures announced by the National Primary Commission (CNP) regarding the primary elections that the Venezuelan righ-wing opposition carried out on Sunday.

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Previously, the CNP issued a bulletin stating that 1,591,504 people voted at 3,331 polling stations. If these figures are taken as a reference to make a statistical average, it can be concluded that 478 voters voted per table.

This figure in turn implies an average of 60 voters per table and per hour in the primary elections of the right-wing opposition. Regarding this, Rampersad said the process of searching for the person's name in the poll books alone can take more than a minute.

"At most 520,000 people went to vote... Figures are being manipulated in an unprecedented way," he said and explained that statistics specialists know that such an average number of voters per hour and per table does not correspond which queuing theory could verify.

"They are deceiving society," Rampersad said and urged CNP President Jesus Maria Casal to stop lying about what happened in the primary elections.

According to a CNP bulletin issued 19 hours after the conclusion of Sunday's elections, former legislator Maria Corina Machado was the winner of the opposition primary elections with 1,473,105 votes, leaving former legislator Carlos Prosperi in second place.

He would have achieved just 70,819 votes, that is, less than 4.4 percent of the votes counted. Eight other presidential candidates would have received less than 0.1 percent of the votes.

These figures caused conservative groups that felt harmed to erupt in criticism of the supposed results of the primaries. Within the National Assembly, for example, opposition legislators also denied the CNP figures, highlighting that only 2.72 percent of citizens voted.

Rampersad also warned that those who seek to benefit candidate Machado could lead to unnecessary confrontations between right-wing organizations and the administration of President Nicolas Maduro.