During the press conference, the official took stock of the damages from the March 7 fire in a CNE storage facility located in the central state of Miranda.

Venezuela’s President of the National Electoral Council (CNE) Tibisay Lucena said Sunday that the electoral system is far from being destroyed and that the entity guarantees the celebration of parliamentary elections despite the fire that destroyed the institution’s equipment.

The president of the electoral body reassured Venezuelans that "if there are small groups thinking that this will stop electoral processes they are wrong, they do not know the will of democratic men and women."

Although around 570 firefighters, security forces and the National Guard rushed to the scene the flames consumed most of the buildings. During the press conference, the official took stock of the damages from the March 7 fire in a CNE storage facility located in the central state of Miranda.

The flames destroyed 582 computers in the Civil Registry, 49,408 voting machines, 400 electronic ballots, 22,434 current inverters, 127,000 ballots, and 49,323 biometric integrated authentication systems. Foul play is still a high possibility, according to teleSUR's Leonel Retamal reporting from the scene.

"There was little that could be rescued, the fire was big," said Lucena, adding that the damage only affected two processes of the voting system: the inventory and the production process.

Among the material saved from the flames were 105,000 voting machine memories, 562 voting machines, 724 fingerprint scanner, and 24 servers.

Venezuela: Firefighters and the GNB continued extinguishing efforts overnight on the CNE & Cantv premises in Caracas.



The fire covered a large part of the sheds at the principle storage center which houses voting machines. CNE's President suggests the possibility of sabotage. pic.twitter.com/J3oNUuwwN3 — Camila (@camilateleSUR) March 8, 2020

As of Sunday no theory regarding the fire has been discarded. On Monday two national prosecutors will arrive at the scene of the incident to continue with the investigations in order to determine the causes of the fire.

"The CNE wants to know the truth. What was the origin of the fire and why did it spread so quickly? No hypothesis is ruled out, we will let the reports determine the causes of the fire," she said.

Less than a month ago, on Feb. 9, Venezuela’s government condemned a terrorist attack on a warehouse of the National Telephone Company of Venezuela (Cantv) and its affiliate Movilnet in the northern state of Carabobo, causing total loss of strategic telecommunications equipment.

The government has denounced on various occasions failed terrorist plots by the U.S.-led opposition to disrupt services or create chaos. The most prominent in 2019 was the continuous attacks between March and July to the country’s power grid, creating massive blackouts across the territory.