Petro reiterates that neither Colombia nor Brazil will recognize Maduro if he does not present the electoral records

The presidents of Colombia and Brazil have agreed that they will not recognize the alleged victory of Nicolás Maduro without the Venezuelan authorities presenting documents proving the result of the disputed elections of July 28, Gustavo Petro said. “We have reached a point, if there is no presentation of minutes there is no recognition,” said the Colombian president on Wednesday, visiting New York for the United Nations General Assembly, in an interview with the Venezuelan government. CNN.

“The process leading up to the elections was wrong,” Petro said in his statements. “Everything that had been discussed in Mexico, Colombia and Barbados so that free elections could take place did not happen,” he said, referring to setbacks such as the disqualification of María Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition who was forced to give up her place to Edmundo González Urrutia. He also insisted that “a country under economic sanctions is not free to vote.”

“You have an opposition that feels like the government, but is not in the government; a government that did not show the minutes, cannot legitimize the elections, but is in the government, and two absolutely polarized and distant positions,” said the president of Colombia, who has made an unusual effort to restrain his statements about the Bolivarian Republic. Together with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Petro has not given up on his aim to facilitate a negotiated solution to the crisis in which Venezuela remains submerged since the elections. The two leaders had planned a bilateral meeting in New York this Wednesday to evaluate their lengthy attempt at mediation, which is suffering considerable wear and tear, but in the end they have not managed to coordinate their agendas. The alignment of their positions has been postponed until next week, when they will coincide in Mexico for the inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum.

While Maduro is entrenched in declaring himself the winner of the elections without showing any credible evidence of that result, the opposition maintains that in reality González Urrutia – already exiled in Spain – won by a wide margin. This is shown by almost all of the minutes that their electoral witnesses were able to collect, a count in which González Urrutia obtained 67% of the votes against Maduro’s 30%.

Almost two months before the elections, the diplomats of Colombia and Brazil have been juggling to avoid internal criticism of both Petro and Lula for not strongly condemning Hugo Chavez’s heir, as another leftist president has done: Chile’s Gabriel Boric. Most Western democracies, led by the United States and even the European Union, have hardened their tone, while Colombia and Brazil have been careful not to burn their bridges with Chavismo completely, while avoiding recognizing any winner in the presidential elections. In their joint communications they have insisted that the credibility of the electoral process “can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data,” as they stated a month ago, as well as asking all those involved to avoid acts of violence and repression.

The day before, in their speeches before the UN General Assembly, neither Lula nor Petro made any major references to the situation in Venezuela. The Brazilian did not even mention it, while the Colombian made a single allusion, but to criticize the blockade of the great powers on “rebel countries” such as Cuba and Venezuela, which earned him new internal criticism for referring to the sanctions without condemning the repression of the protests or the probable electoral fraud. In contrast, Boric, while calling for the lifting of economic sanctions and asking for a political solution that recognizes the victory of the opposition, reiterated that Latin America is “facing a dictatorship that intends to steal an election, that persecutes its opponents and is indifferent to the exile, not of thousands, but of millions of its citizens.”

Both Petro and Lula reestablished the always difficult relations with neighboring Venezuela at the beginning of their respective governments. For Colombia, in particular, it is vital to find a peaceful solution, since it shares a porous border of more than 2,200 kilometers and is by far the main host country for the Venezuelan diaspora, with almost three million migrants in its territory. Both have suggested the possibility of a transitional coalition government and new elections with guarantees as eventual solutions to the crisis, but that idea has been rejected by both the opposition and the Chavistas.

Petro also stated on his social networks on Wednesday that he will study the request from the Colombian Congress to recognize Edmundo González as the elected president of Venezuela, although he made it clear that “the person who constitutionally directs the country’s foreign relations is the president of the Republic.” The president also acknowledged the day before, in statements to journalists accompanying him in New York, that diplomatic solutions require patience. “We have to wait to see who will be the next president of the United States, and with that new government build a political solution to Venezuela’s problems,” he declared in reference to the North American elections on November 5. In Venezuela, the presidential inauguration is scheduled for January 10, and the most optimistic defenders of a negotiated solution believe that until then there is room for maneuver.

Subscribe here to the Morning Express newsletter on Colombia andHere on the WhatsApp channeland receive all the key information on current events in the country.