The United States recognised Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s opponent and opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of Venezuela’s disputed presidential election.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday:
Given the overwhelming evidence, 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.
A dispute over the results of the presidential election triggered protests in Venezuela. The electoral council declared Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, the winner of the 28 July election with 51% of the vote. However, the country’s opposition argues that its count of about 90 per cent of the vote shows that González received more than twice as much support as the incumbent president, according to independent polls conducted before the election.
Blinken’s statement on Thursday did not threaten new sanctions on Venezuela, but he hinted at possible “punitive action.”
“We fully support the process of re-establishing democratic norms in Venezuela and stand ready to consider ways to bolster it jointly with our international partners. (…) Law enforcement and security forces should not become an instrument of political violence used against citizens exercising their democratic rights.”
The presidents of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia called on Venezuela to release detailed results of Thursday’s vote amid a dispute over the results of the presidential election. In a joint statement, the governments of the three countries called for “impartial verification” of the results and urged Caracas to release voting data broken down by polling stations.
Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called on Thursday for protests “in every city” in the country on Saturday to denounce Maduro’s election.
We must remain firm, organised and mobilised with the pride of having achieved a historic victory on 28 July, and the awareness that to claim victory we will also go all the way.
At least 20 people have died in protests that erupted after the election, according to Machado, while more than 1,000 have been jailed. Venezuela’s Supreme Court summoned all presidential candidates to a hearing on Friday afternoon following Maduro’s request that it initiate a process to investigate and certify the election result.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said one military officer was killed and 77 officials were injured during the unrest.
