Maduro dismisses vote rigging charge, delays launch of new assembly

‘Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has rejected an allegation that the recent vote on the powerful national assembly was rigged, calling the claim a “reaction by the international enemy.”
“Nothing can stain this process, because it’s transparent,” said the Venezuelan leader at a meeting with the delegates elected to the new Constituent Assembly on Wednesday.
According to the official figures released after Sunday’s vote, some eight million legitimate voters cast their ballots to elect a 545-seat assembly, which will be capable of rewriting the country’s constitution and dissolving the current opposition-led legislature.
However, the UK-based Smartmatic Group, a multinational electronic voting company that provided nearly 24,000 voting machines for Venezuelans to cast their votes electronically, claimed Wednesday that the turnout figures had been “tampered with.”’
Read more: Maduro dismisses vote rigging charge, delays launch of new assembly

Who are Smartmatic? And what involvement, if any, does George Soros have?

 
Bio for Smartmatic Chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown
‘Mark served as Deputy Secretary-General and Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of the UNDP, leading the UN’s development efforts around the world. He was later Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia, and was a member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet.
Other positions have included vice-chairman of George Soros’s Investment Funds, as well as his Open Society Institute, a Vice-President at the World Bank and the lead international partner at Sawyer Miller, a political consulting firm. He also has served as Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He began his career as a journalist at The Economist.
In addition to his role at SGO, Mark sits on several other commercial boards and remains a Senior Advisor to FTI Consulting, where he was previously Chairman for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He chairs the Boards of a number of non-profit boards including the International Crisis Group, the Open Society Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Centre for Global Development.’
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