Maduro Claims Venezuela Regime General as 18th Governor By Carlos Camacho Latin American Herald Tribune October 18, 2017
CARACAS -- Venezuela's CNE electoral board ruled in the early hours of Wednesday that Maduro regime candidate Justo Noguera is the new governor of gold-rich Bolivar state in Eastern Venezuela, as opposition candidate Andres Velasquez continues heading protests against that result.
But even before the CNE changed their results page around midnight, Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro had proclaimed that he had won the Bolivar state governorship 10 hours earlier in a press conference.
And just who is Justo Jose Noguera Pietri?
In 2014, as commander of the National Guard he headed the violent repression of demonstrations in 2014, during which 43 demonstrators and security forces were killed. Months after the demonstrations ended, the US sanctioned him a Specially Designated National.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published this short bio of the new governor of Bolivar state when it placed him on the SDN list in 2015: “NOGUERA PIETRI, Justo Jose (Spanish: NOGUERA PIETRI, Justo José); DOB 15 Mar 1961; POB Piritu, Venezuela; nationality Venezuela; citizen Venezuela; Gender Male; Cedula No. 5.944.426 (Venezuela); Passport B0942407 (Venezuela) expires 18 Dec 2006; alt. Passport 018295955 (Venezuela); President of the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG); former Major General, General Commander of Venezuela's Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) (individual) [VENEZUELA]”.
Noguera was a member of the first batch of seven Venezuelan current and/or former officials sanctioned as SDNs by the U.S. in 2015. More have been added to the list since, including President Nicolas Maduro and Vice President Tareck El Aissami this year by the Donald Trump administration.
So far, some 46 Venezuelans, mostly government officials and military, have received some sort of designation by the U.S., either SDN or similar.
As a SDN, the new governor of Bolivar has had all of its properties in the U.S. frozen and his entry has been blocked, as he has determined to be, according to an executive order signed by then President Barack Obama, to be one of “Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela”.
Through Noguera, the Maduro-controlled CNE has awarded Venezuela’s ruling party PSUV its 18th state government, as the fallout of the Sunday October 15th election continues to raise eyebrows and stir tempers inside and outside the oil-rich country. So far, 15 countries, from neighboring Colombia, to the United States and France, have denounced the regional elections’ results as unreliable, with a dozen Latin American countries in the “Group of Lima” asking for an internationally-supervised audit.
Besides being an SDN, Noguera was not born in Bolivar state but in Miranda. However, he does have plenty of Bolivar experience: as head of the heavy-industries and mining concern CVG, output there dropped to unprecedented lows, according to “Transparencia Venezuela”, the local chapter of anti-corruption NGO “Transparency International”. CVG is used as a model here of how not to run a state-owned company.
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Venezuelan Opposition Claims Its Candidate Won Regional Election in Bolivar Latin American Herald Tribune October 17, 2017
CARACAS – The Venezuelan opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) called on Tuesday on the National Electoral Council (CNE) to proclaim its candidate as the winner in the gubernatorial elections in the southern state of Bolivar, claiming that the counted votes indicated so.
The MUD said in a statement that it “demands that the CNE respect the will of the people of the Bolivar State as well as the 100 percent of the counted votes that indicate, without any doubt, that the winning candidate for governorship is Andres Velasquez,” from The Cause R party.
The coalition said that it has 100 percent of the votes counted in that state, which serves as the basis to urge that the CNE “comply with what is established in the law, and proclaim Velasquez as the new governor” of Bolivar.
Two days have passed after Sunday’s regional elections, but the official results of Bolivar state have not been revealed, and dozens of opposition members have been protesting since Monday at the CNE regional headquarters to demand the vote audit as well as the proclamation of its candidates as the new governor.
The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the opposition on Sunday vied for the country’s 23 governorates, 17 of which went to the hand of the PSUV and five to the opposition.
However, the MUD does not recognize this result and demanded that the entire process be audited.
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