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edmundo gonzalez
As Venezuela Court Probes Election Results, US Declares Victory for Right-Wing Opposition
Venezuela's foreign ministry hit back at the U.S. State Department, accusing it of spearheading a "coup attempt."
Aug 02, 2024
The U.S. State Department has formally recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of Venezuela's election as the nation's highest legal body began an investigation of the vote at the request of President Nicolás Maduro, who says he prevailed in the contest that is now under intense global scrutiny.
In a statement released days after Venezuela's election authority, Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), declared Maduro the winner with just over 51% of the vote, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed late Thursday that "it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela's July 28 presidential election."
"Now is the time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful, peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people," said Blinken, the top diplomat of a country that has repeatedly attempted to overthrow the Maduro government and hammered the country's economy with sanctions. "We fully support the process of reestablishing democratic norms in Venezuela and stand ready to consider ways to bolster it jointly with our international partners."
Venezuela's Foreign Affairs Ministry quickly hit back, saying Friday that it "rejects the serious and ridiculous statements attributed to United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which he pretends to assume the role of the Venezuelan electoral authorities, demonstrating that the U.S. government is leading the coup attempt against Venezuela, promoting a violent agenda against the Venezuelan people and their institutions."
Blinken's statement accepting the right-wing opposition's claim of a decisive victory came a day after Maduro asked Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal of Justice on Wednesday to audit the presidential contest in the face of vocal concerns from regional leaders, election observers, and leading human rights organizations.
In a joint statement issued Thursday, the presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico said they are "closely following" the vote-counting process and called on the CNE to "move forward expeditiously and publicly release the data broken down by voting station"—something the Maduro government indicated it will do but has yet to provide.
Meanwhile, the Carter Center—an organization whose founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, once praised Venezuela's election system as "the best in the world"—argued that the 2024 contest "did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic."
"In the limited number of polling centers they visited, Carter Center observer teams noted the desire of the Venezuelan people to participate in a democratic election process, as demonstrated through their active participation as polling staff, party witnesses, and citizen observers," the group said in a statement earlier this week. "However, their efforts were undermined by the CNE's complete lack of transparency in announcing the results."
The Carter Center also preemptively raised doubts about the legitimacy of the Venezuelan high court's assessment of the election.
"You have another government institution, which is appointed by the government, to verify the government numbers for the election results, which are in question," Jennie Lincoln, who led the Carter Center's election delegation to Venezuela, toldThe Associated Press. "This is not an independent assessment."
The tense and high-stakes dispute over the rightful winner of Venezuela's election has set off violence in the streets of the nation's capital and sparked fierce debate over the path forward for the Latin American nation's government.
Some on the progressive left, both in Venezuela and internationally, view the right-wing opposition's claims to victory as yet another in a long line of attacks on Venezuelan democracy by pro-corporate and fascist forces, while others—including left-wing regional leaders such as Chilean President Gabriel Boric—have expressed deep suspicions about the legitimacy of the contest, particularly given the CNE's lack of transparency surrounding the vote count. CNE has attributed the delayed rollout of full results to a cyberattack.
"The international community, and especially the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the election records and the process, and that international observers not affiliated with the government report on the accuracy of the results," Boric wrote on social media. "From Chile, we will not recognize any result that is not verifiable."
Others in Latin America have stood by Maduro, including Bolivia's government, which is led by a left-wing president who recently faced an attempted coup.
Venezuela's opposition, led by MarÃa Corina Machado, continues to insist it won Sunday's election, producing its own website purporting to demonstrate that González defeated Maduro with 67% of the vote.
On Thursday, Machado—who was barred from participating in the presidential contest—took to the pages of the U.S. business press to proclaim that she can "prove Maduro got trounced."
"Maduro didn't win the Venezuelan presidential election on Sunday. He lost in a landslide to Edmundo González, 67% to 30%," Machado wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. "I know this to be true because I can prove it. I have receipts obtained directly from more than 80% of the nation's polling stations."
Maduro has pledged to release the full election results in the coming days and blamed Machado and the U.S. for stoking unrest and violence.
"If the U.S. government is willing to respect sovereignty and stop threatening Venezuela, we can return to dialogue," Maduro wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
"Venezuela is not your colony," Maduro said.
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Maduro Slams Attempted 'Coup Against Venezuela' as Far-Right Cries Fraud
One political scientist argued that "doubts about Venezuela's elections appear less as concerns that the people's voice will not be heard, than that it will."
Jul 30, 2024
Venezuela's far-right opposition is doubling down on its refusal to accept defeat in the country's presidential election amid simmering unrest and violence in the streets of Caracas, sparking warnings of another coup attempt in a nation that has long faced interference from the United States and other Western powers.
Led by MarÃa Corina Machado, who was disqualified from running in Sunday's election, Venezuela's opposition claimed that its candidate—ex-diplomat Edmundo González—defeated President Nicolás Maduro with over 70% of the vote, contradicting the official results announced by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE).
Machado, who once urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back an effort to topple Maduro's elected government, pointed Venezuelans to a website the opposition is using to assemble its own vote counts.
"So far, she hasn't presented any evidence [of fraud]," Caracas-based reporter AndreÃna Chávez Alava said in an appearance on Democracy Now! Tuesday morning. "In past elections they have also said they have evidence that they won and they never actually showed any proof."
Protests have erupted in Venezuela after President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of Sunday’s election, with the opposition accusing the government of vote fraud. Caracas-based reporter @AChavezAlava of @venanalysis describes the tense situation on the ground. pic.twitter.com/V1xrXuJ8q3
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) July 30, 2024
According to CNE, Maduro won with just over 51% of the vote in a contest that one group of independent election observers described as "fair and transparent." Experts, election watchers, and the leaders of other Latin American nations—including the left-wing presidents of Brazil and Chile—have called on CNE to release detailed election results to dispel any doubts about the contest's legitimacy.
Right-wing leaders in Latin America, meanwhile, have backed the Venezuelan opposition's unsubstantiated claims of election theft. Javier Milei, Argentina's far-right president, declared on social media that "Argentina is not going to recognize another fraud, and hopes that the armed forces this time will defend democracy and the popular will"—openly hinting at the possibility of a military coup.
Milei's comments, as well as those of other right-wing political leaders in the region, prompted Venezuela to announce the withdrawal of diplomatic personnel from Argentina and several other nations.
The United States, which has a long history of meddling in Venezuelan politics and has supported past efforts to oust Maduro's government, has also questioned the CNE tally and floated the possibility of additional sanctions, which have had devastating impacts on Venezuela's economy.
"We have serious concerns that this result does not reflect the will and the votes of the Venezuelan people," Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, told reporters during a briefing on Monday.
Addressing Venezuelans on Monday, Maduro condemned what he described as an attempted "coup against Venezuela" by "the world's extreme right." Maduro also denounced those who toppled a statue of the late former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
"All acts of criminal violence will be judged in accordance with Venezuelan laws and the full and absolute weight of the law will be applied to them," said Maduro.
Venezuelanalysisreported that on early Monday afternoon, "a group of protesters attempted to advance to Miraflores Presidential Palace through the central Urdaneta Avenue before being stopped by a police cordon."
Later in the day, the outlet continued, a "group of masked activists clashed with the National Guard in El Silencio, close to another access to the presidential palace."
Political scientist Jodi Dean wrote in the wake of Sunday's elections that "from here in Caracas, I can attest that U.S. doubts" about the legitimacy of Sunday's election "are unwarranted."
"Venezuela has one of the most advanced voting systems in the world," Dean wrote in a blog post published by Progressive International on Tuesday. "U.S. doubts about Venezuela's elections appear less as concerns that the people's voice will not be heard, than that it will."
"Neoliberalism is crumbling and a battle is underway for what will replace it: war and oppression or peace and solidarity?" Dean continued. "The refusal of the opposition to accept the results of the election, and, indeed, their willingness to double down by claiming to have won over 70% of the vote and incite violence across the country demonstrates that the battle won't be an easy one."
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