Caracas. The European Union insisted on Saturday that Venezuela’s National Electoral Council must publish the minutes of the presidential vote held on July 28 and subject them to independent verification to ensure that the will of the Venezuelan people is respected.
The European Union’s top representative, Josep Borrell, said in a statement that, so far, the Venezuelan authorities “have not provided the necessary public evidence” to evaluate the results of the elections in which the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.
According to the electoral body, Maduro obtained 6.4 million votes and his rival, Edmundo González, 5.3 million. While the opposition claims to have collected records from more than 80% of the 30,000 electronic voting machines showing that its candidate won.
The EU has thus joined the pressure of the international community calling for transparency in the process and rejecting the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that certified the CNE results in favour of Maduro, who requested the expert opinion. International organisations have questioned the independence of the court, made up of officials close to the regime.
“Only complete and independently verifiable results will be accepted and recognized” that guarantee respect for the popular will of the Venezuelan people, Borrell said, according to the document.
For their part, the left-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil, which are close to Venezuela, issued a joint statement saying they were “convinced that the credibility of the electoral process can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data.” Both countries undertook a diplomatic mediation effort whose position has been to make the process transparent, and therefore reiterated their willingness to “facilitate” an understanding between the parties, the joint statement said.
Gonzalez’s main supporter and opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, has repeatedly called on the international community to recognize what she considers was a resounding victory for Gonzalez and to pressure the government to recognize these results, as she said in a message posted on the social network X on Saturday.
The Venezuelan government condemned Borrell’s statement and said his conduct was “interventionist.” In a statement from the foreign ministry on Saturday, it said that the “continued disrespect” for the sovereignty of that country by the EU could “significantly affect diplomatic, political and economic relations.”
Regarding Borrell’s statement that according to the minutes released by the opposition and which are public, González “would appear to be the winner” by a “significant majority,” the Venezuelan government said that these are “forged” documents.
Finally, he demanded that the European Union refrain from commenting on internal matters.
On Tuesday, 10 Latin American countries and the United States categorically rejected the ruling of the Venezuelan Supreme Court and requested an impartial audit.
The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States also protested, saying that “recognizing the CNE results as valid based on the TSJ ruling is to validate electoral fraud.”
Even Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, one of Maduro’s closest allies in the region, said his government would wait for the CNE to publish the electoral results before deciding whether to recognize the Venezuelan president as the winner.
#puts #pressure #Venezuelan #electoral #records
– 2024-08-31 02:49:46
