by Zurellys Villegas
The Organization of American States (OAS) rejected by vote the resolution on the elections in Venezuela held last Sunday, in which it sought to urge the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) to publish the electoral records “immediately.”
During the extraordinary meeting held this Wednesday, the Permanent Council did not achieve the necessary support to approve the draft resolution entitled “On the elections in Venezuela on July 28, 2024” that demanded that “a comprehensive verification of the results be carried out in the presence of independent observation organizations to guarantee the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the electoral results.”
Likewise, the resolution highlighted “the importance of protecting and preserving all the equipment used in the electoral process, including the printed records and results, in order to safeguard the entire chain of custody of the voting process.”
Finally, and after a long debate lasting more than five hours behind closed doors, the vote concluded with 17 votes in favor, 11 abstentions, five absences and zero votes against, where several countries openly accused Maduro of perpetuating electoral fraud, by declaring him the winner without first presenting the electoral records for scrutiny and on top of many anomalies.
The United States, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Suriname voted in favor of the resolution.
The 11 abstentions were in the hands of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Grenada, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia.
In addition to Mexico, among the absentees were Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, as well as Venezuela, absent from the organization since 2019 when President Maduro assured that the OAS had become a “space of imperial domination.”
Mexico did not participate in the extraordinary meeting of the OAS on Venezuela
Earlier, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced that his country will not participate in the meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) to address the results of the electoral process in Venezuela.
“We are not going to participate because we do not agree with the biased attitude of the OAS,” he said during his daily morning press conference when reporting that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena, would not be at the meeting.
“Why are we going to a meeting like this? That is not serious, it is not responsible, it does not help to find a peaceful, democratic solution to a conflict in a Latin American country or any country in the world,” said López Obrador.
Likewise, the Mexican president reiterated his criticism against the “interference” in Venezuela. “Enough of that, enough of the interventionism, Venezuela’s problems have stagnated, they have not found a solution because there is too much interference, they are getting involved from abroad,” he said.
“There is a lot of interference and in the case of the media, not only in Mexico but around the world, there is a need for more professionalism, more objectivity, more balance, because they lean too much to one side or the other and it is not just the conventional media or the agencies, now social networks are taken over as well, so there is a need to democratize the media,” continued the Mexican president during his speech on Wednesday morning.
After the Carter Center, which participated as an observer in the Venezuelan elections, published that the process “did not conform to international parameters and standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic,” López Obrador emphasized his support for waiting for the final result of the vote count by the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE).
“In the case of Venezuela, what we want is for there to be evidence, for the minutes to be shown, for there to be transparency and, something that is very important, which has to do with all Venezuelan brothers, that there is no violence, that the electoral authorities be called upon to give all the results and that we wait,” said AMLO.
In his meeting with the media, the Mexican leader was also asked if there was a similarity between the claim of the Venezuelan opposition María Corina Machado and its presidential candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, and the one made in the Mexican vote in 2006, when he denounced fraud in the process that gave the victory to Felipe Calderón.
Ignoring that the opposition has already uploaded the evidence to the internet where everyone can see the minutes that show his victory, he said: “I have no elements, there is no evidence in the case of Venezuela, we did have a lot of evidence; to begin with, it was officially said that (Felipe) Calderón and the PAN had obtained an advantage of 0.5 percent, I think of 200 thousand votes, 240 thousand… so we asked that the votes be counted and they refused,” responded the Mexican president to such questioning.
The Carter Center released its report on the Venezuelan elections
The Carter Center, one of the main organizations that participated in the observation of the presidential elections that were held last Sunday in Venezuela, published a statement on Tuesday night in which it affirms that it could not verify or corroborate the authenticity of the results published by the Venezuelan electoral authority (CNE) that declared Nicolás Maduro the winner for a new presidential term.
In the text, the organization said that the presidential election in the South American country “did not conform to international parameters and standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.”
“The fact that the electoral authority has not announced results broken down by polling station constitutes a serious violation of electoral principles,” said the organization that recognized the civic participation of the Venezuelan people, describing it as “massive, peaceful and civic.
“It has violated numerous precepts of the national legislation itself,” reads the text.
Regarding this statement, President Nicolás Maduro said that it was already written before they arrived in the country. “Everyone who came from the Carter Center to Venezuela brought the report already written, we have had it for a month, we have the Carter Center report already written, what they lacked was spice, which they added now, because they have denatured themselves, it is no longer Jimmy Carter who runs it, it only bears his name, unfortunately,” said the Venezuelan president this Wednesday in a press conference.
Maduro then stated that those who run this organization work for the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The official leader also said that they have wanted to turn the elections into a “world event.” “How many statements did you put out when Donald Trump denounced fraud in the elections where President (Joe) Biden was named president?” the Venezuelan president asked, referring to when former President Donald Trump questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Finally, Maduro said he is ready to hand over “100% of the electoral records” and said that opposition leaders who denounce fraud “should be behind bars.”
With information from Reuters / AP / AFP / RT.
