The secretary general of the Organization of American States on Tuesday urged Nicolás Maduro to recognize his defeat in Venezuela’s presidential elections or call for a new, more transparent vote, adding to numerous international questions about the result of the elections that proclaimed the current president the winner and that has been ignored by several countries.
Shortly after, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, urged Maduro’s government to immediately release “the complete, detailed and transparent election results” with which the president was declared the winner.
A White House statement on the phone call between the two presidents said Brazil and the United States recognized that the situation in Venezuela “represents a critical moment for democracy in the hemisphere.” The two leaders also pledged to have close coordination on the issue of Venezuela, according to the White House’s one-paragraph statement.
Meanwhile, the government of Peru recognized the opposition leader Edmundo González as the president-elect of Venezuela and from Costa Rica came the offer of asylum for the opposition candidate and for the leader María Corina Machado in the face of the messages launched by Venezuelan authorities to have them arrested.
The increase in international pressure comes two days after the elections and after Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) officially proclaimed Maduro president on Monday, in his second re-election, after Sunday night released results that gave the president the electoral victory with 51% of the votes against 44% for González.
“It is imperative to know about Maduro’s acceptance of the minutes held by the opposition and consequently accept his electoral defeat,” Luis Almagro’s office said in its first statement on Sunday’s electoral process in Venezuela.
“If this is not done, it would be necessary to hold new elections,” but this time with international observers from the European Union and the OAS and new electoral authorities “to reduce the margin of institutional irregularity that plagued this process,” the general secretariat of the continental organization said in a press release.
Shortly after Costa Rica offered him asylum, Machado thanked him and said on his account on the social network X, formerly Twitter, that his priority is the protection of the six members of his party who have been in asylum since April at the residence of the ambassador of Argentina.
Peruvian Foreign Minister Javier González-Olaechea, meanwhile, announced that his government recognizes González as “the legitimate president-elect of Venezuela” and maintained that Maduro is “a person who wishes to perpetuate himself in power through dictatorship.”
After that pronouncement, Maduro’s government agreed to break diplomatic relations with Peru. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said Tuesday night on his X account that Caracas made the decision after the “reckless statements” of his Peruvian counterpart.
Later, the presidency of Peru said on its social networks that the decision of Maduro’s government was made by “the impossibility of reliably demonstrating its attributed electoral victory, exhibiting all the minutes with international verification as requested by countries and multiple international organizations.”
For his part, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Arnoldo André offered his country’s territory as asylum for both opponents and for those who have taken refuge in the Argentina embassy in Caracas.
Shortly after the pronouncement by Almagro’s office, the United States again criticized the lack of transparency in the process and asked the South American nation’s electoral authorities to reveal the results. He also said that he is reviewing information shared by civil organizations and reports from international observers.
Only a handful of international observers were authorized by the Venezuelan government to witness the election, including a small delegation from the United Nations and the Carter Center, a U.S. nongovernmental organization that promotes democracy.
Several Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Uruguay, criticized the lack of transparency in the electoral process that proclaimed Maduro president, angering the Venezuelan government that ordered the return of all its diplomatic personnel in those nations and asked them to do the same with their personnel in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan opposition has said it is unaware of the electoral authority’s announcement of Maduro’s victory and has documents and minutes that prove Gonzalez is the president-elect.
For some experts, it is vital that the opposition shows these records to give veracity to their claims.
“It’s really important to reinforce how people see this and how they respond,” said Caleb McCarry, a Venezuela expert who has met with Maduro in the past and is now vice president of PAX Sapiens, a nonprofit foundation that focuses on global issues.
At a virtual conference on Venezuela hosted by the Washington Atlantic Council’s think tank, McCarry said election authorities should publish data for each constituency and that the Venezuelan opposition should go to election authorities with tally sheets purportedly showing voter rolls.
Panama was the first to announce that it would withdraw its diplomatic staff in Caracas and that it would put relations with Venezuela “on hold,” triggering more condemnation from the region and a strong response from Maduro.
Although its observers were not authorized by Maduro to be present at the elections, the European Union (EU) said that it has closely followed the process and that according to “reliable” reports from national and international observers there were “numerous failures and irregularities.”
“The counts of these elections have not been authenticated and cannot be taken into account as representative of the Venezuelan popular will until all the official minutes of the polling stations are verified and published,” said Josep Borrell, the EU high representative.
Experts consulted by AP believe that it is necessary for the international community to raise its voice to generate pressure on Maduro.
For some nations, such as the United States, it would be through sanctions and “for most countries pressuring Maduro to publish the vote counts so that they can be audited,” Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the AP. “Until then, there will be a cloud of suspicion over his head and he will remain an international pariah.”
At the request of Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the United States, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, the OAS Permanent Council will hold a special meeting on Wednesday to analyze the situation in Venezuela, which recently decided unilaterally to withdraw from the organization.
Almagro’s office stressed the urgency for Maduro to recognize his defeat or call for new elections “taking into account that the opposition campaign command has already presented the minutes by which he would have won the election” and the ruling party — including the electoral authorities — “has not been able to present the minutes by which he would have won, which for this moment would be pathetic and laughable if it were not tragic.
The official statement was made public that same day that Almagro received a report from the OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation on the country’s elections.
“The complete manual of the fraudulent handling of the electoral result was applied in Venezuela on Sunday night,” said the secretary general’s office. “We went to an electoral process without guarantees, nor mechanisms and procedures to enforce those guarantees,” he said.
