Anti-Chavez leader María Corina Machado thanked the foreign ministers of Ecuador, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Panama and Guatemala for their support at the extraordinary session held this Wednesday by the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), during which a resolution demanding that Venezuela reveal the minutes of the recent elections failed.
Through various messages published on the social network X, Machado expressed his gratitude to the Ecuadorian Gabriela Sommerfeld, the Uruguayan Omar Paganini, the Dominican Roberto Álvarez, the Chilean Alberto van Klaveren, the Argentine Diana Mondino, the Peruvian Javier González-Olaechea, the Paraguayan Rubén Ramírez, the Panamanian Javier Martínez-Acha Vásquez and the Guatemalan Carlos Ramiro Martínez.
The former deputy also welcomed the words of support from representatives of Costa Rica, Canada and the United States to the OAS.
These countries, as well as El Salvador, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname, voted in favour of a text that called on the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela to publish “immediately the results of the vote” at each polling station.
It also calls for “comprehensive verification of the results in the presence of independent observer organisations to ensure the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the results.”
The resolution, with no votes against but with abstentions, declared “an absolute priority to safeguard fundamental human rights in Venezuela, especially the right of citizens to demonstrate peacefully without reprisals.”
Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Grenada, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia abstained, while Dominica, Mexico, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Venezuela, which has been absent for some time, did not participate in the session.
On Monday, the CNE declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner by just over 704,114 votes over the standard-bearer of the main opposition coalition – the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) – Edmundo González Urrutia, with more than two million votes still to be counted, which could change the final results.
The PUD claims to have more than 80% of the votes, which it claims give González Urrutia the victory by a wide margin, and which citizens who voted can consult on a website set up by the opposition sector, for which they only need their identity document number.
The Carter Center, which participated as an observer in the elections, stated on Tuesday that the process “did not conform” to the international parameters and standards of electoral integrity, and therefore “cannot be considered a democratic election.”
