The European Union does not accept the results of the Venezuelan presidential elections of July 28, which have been released by the Chavista regime, giving victory to Nicolás Maduro. “Without evidence to support them, the results published on August 2 by the National Electoral Council cannot be recognized,” the Twenty-Seven point out in a statement in which they also give more credibility to the data provided by the opposition in which their candidate, Edmundo González, “appears to be the winner of the presidential elections by a significant majority.” The EU does not stop there and also demands that Venezuela “put an end to arbitrary detentions, repression and violent rhetoric against the opposition and civil society” in a statement issued by the Council of the EU late on Sunday, according to European time.
Just one day after seven EU countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Portugal) issued a joint statement demanding the publication of all electoral records, the entire Union did so on Sunday, as these EU Council statements require the unanimity of all Member States. This is the first unanimous statement issued by the Union on this crisis in the Caribbean country. The previous one, on Tuesday, was actually a note from the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell. Now the tone is raised both in substance and in form.
The statement does not go as far as to recognize the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, as the winner of the election with force, something that the United States has already done. But the Twenty-Seven do make it very clear that they give more credibility to the opposition’s numbers than to the official ones. “The copies of the electoral records published by the opposition, and reviewed by several independent organizations, indicate that Edmundo González Urrutia appears to be the winner of the presidential elections by a significant majority,” they point out in the statement. Its tone is much more measured than that used by the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, last Friday, who published a message on the social network X in which he said: “The electoral data overwhelmingly demonstrates the will of the Venezuelan people: the democratic opposition candidate, Edmundo González, obtained the greatest number of votes in Sunday’s elections. Venezuelans have voted and their votes must count.”
Although there is a difference in the language, both statements refer to documents published by the opposition on a website in which they indicate that González would win with 67% of the votes compared to Maduro’s 30%.
These numbers are very different from those offered by the CNE, the Venezuelan electoral body, which gives a result in the presidential elections of 51.9% of the votes for Nicolás Maduro and 43.1% for Edmundo González. As was the case with the first announcement of the recount, in the early hours of Monday, July 29, the CNE did not offer any evidence to support the numbers it releases. Hence, the EU, other multilateral bodies and a large part of the international community demand that the Chavista regime present the electoral records as soon as possible, because “any attempt to delay the full publication of the official electoral records will only cast further doubt on the credibility of the officially published results,” warns the community statement, which also calls for “a new independent verification of the electoral records, if possible by an entity of international reputation.”
In the shadow of the electoral fraud, there have been citizen mobilizations in Venezuela since Monday 29th, when in the early hours of the morning the CNE issued a first electoral bulletin giving victory to Maduro without evidence to support the numbers it offered. This mobilization, which has reached its climax so far in the demonstration this Saturday 3rd August, has so far resulted in a thousand arrests, up to 20 deaths and a hundred wounded in just one week. And in the face of this extremely tense situation, the EU makes “a call for calm and moderation”. “It is important that the demonstrations and protests remain peaceful”, it warns.
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For the Venezuelan authorities, the level of demand has been raised. “They must fully respect human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly,” it demands. The text goes on to “call on the Venezuelan authorities to put an end to arbitrary detentions, repression and violent rhetoric against members of the opposition and civil society, and to release all political prisoners.”
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