US Rejects Maduro’s Election Claims, Declares Opposition Candidate Rightful Venezuelan President

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:27 pm

The U.S. government has declared opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won the most recent round of elections in Venezuela, dismissing the conclusions of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) which declared the incumbent President Nicolás Maduro the winner.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an Aug. 1 press statement, congratulated the Venezuelan people for participating in the July 28 elections, before denouncing the CNE’s vote tally.

“Unfortunately, the processing of those votes and the announcement of results by the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) were deeply flawed, yielding an announced outcome that does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people,” Blinken said. “The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence. The CNE still has not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets, despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community to do so.”

Blinken said the CNE hadn’t provided precinct-level voting results, but that the “democratic opposition” had published “more than 80 percent of the tally sheets received directly from polling stations throughout Venezuela.” Furthermore, Blinken said the tally sheets published thus far showed Urrutia with an insurmountable margin. He said independent election observers have also corroborated the opposition’s vote tally assessments.

Blinken said at least 12 million Venezuelans participated in this latest election.

The CNE, as of its latest vote tally, has Maduro leading with 51.9 percent of the vote to Urrutia’s 43.2 percent. The CNE’s vote tally stands at about 11.7 million votes counted, with Maduro leading Urrutia by around 1 million votes.

Reports of violence and rioting have circulated throughout the South American country since the Sunday election.

On Tuesday, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Venezuela’s defense minister and top military officer, characterized the ongoing unrest as a coup. He and other Venezuelan military officers have continued to back Maduro publicly. Lopez, on Friday, said Maduro is leading the effort to defeat this coup and maintain the peace.

International Community Weighs Contested Venezuelan Election

The governments of Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Bolivia, and Honduras were among the first to call the election for Maduro. This week, Maduro thanked leaders of Namibia and Vietnam for declaring him the election winner.

Maduro also touted support from the head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Kuwaiti oil executive Haitham al-Ghais.

On the same day Blinken declared Urrutia the winner, he also signed onto a statement with the G7 countries, urging Venezuelan election authorities to “publish the detailed electoral results in full transparency” and provide all information available to opposition representatives and international election observers. The G7 statement included the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The G7 statement stops short of declaring any winner.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top representative for foreign affairs also called, on July 30, for Venezuelan authorities to provide transparency with their election results.

Maduro, this week, asked the Venezuelan Supreme Court to audit the election results. He further insisted his party was ready to present the vote tallies and undergo scrutiny.

The Carter Center, an election observer organization formed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, has signaled a Venezuelan Supreme Court audit would not be sufficient to clear up the election.

“This is not an independent assessment,” Jennie Lincoln, the Carter Center’s senior Latin America and Caribbean advisor, told the Associated Press this week.

“You have another government institution, which is appointed by the government, to verify the government numbers for the election results, which are in question,” Lincoln said.