By The newspaper
01 Aug 2024, 19:37 PM EDT
The governments of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia on Thursday asked Venezuelan electoral authorities to “expeditiously” publish the data “broken down by voting table” from Sunday’s presidential elections, in which the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.
“Disputes over the electoral process must be settled through institutional channels. The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification of the results,” the three countries said in a joint statement.
At the same time, the governments called on political actors to act with “maximum caution and restraint” during the protests to avoid “an escalation of violent episodes,” after at least 11 deaths and hundreds of arrests were reported.
“Maintaining social peace and protecting human lives must be the priority concerns at this time,” the statement said.
The executives also reiterated their “absolute respect” for the sovereignty of the popular will in Venezuela, as well as their willingness to assist in efforts to “dialogue and seek agreements.”
The Venezuelan CNE declared Nicolás Maduro the winner with 80% of the votes counted, over opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, in a result that was widely rejected by the opposition and by part of the international community.
In an unprecedented event, the electoral body did not publish any of the supposedly counted minutes or the results broken down by state. 72 hours after the elections, they have still not been published and the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, has postponed a press conference to announce the second bulletin on three occasions.
The minutes of the opposition
Instead, the Venezuelan opposition has enabled the website resultadosconvzla.com to verify the results broken down by entities, municipalities and others, based on the electoral records collected by its witnesses and issued by the CNE’s own machines on election day. It also enabled the website ganovzla.com so that each voter can verify the record of their polling station and compare it with the record issued at their polling station last Sunday.
Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico have avoided recognizing the results without cutting ties with the Maduro administration.
The three leaders abstained or avoided participating in the vote on a resolution of the Organization of American States (OAS) that called for, among other things, the immediate publication of the minutes of each electoral center.
Maduro’s government has already expelled diplomats from several countries in the region, including Argentina and Chile, whose leader, fellow progressive Gabriel Boric, has openly questioned the validity of the results.
With information from EFE.
Keep reading:
OAS will ask the International Criminal Court to arrest Nicolás Maduro
Venezuelans in New York form coalition to urge US to act on allegations of electoral fraud
Nicolás Maduro calls Edmundo González “cowardly sir” and challenges him to go to Miraflores