By: Sir Ronald Sanders
August 9, 2024
In the immediate aftermath of the Venezuelan presidential elections, whose results were widely disputed within Venezuela and by the majority of neighbouring Latin American states, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) held a Special Session on July 31, under my chairmanship, to attempt to reach a consensus among the 32 active member states.
The meeting was requested by 12 countries with the aim of addressing the results of the Venezuelan electoral process. Unusually, nine foreign ministers attended the Permanent Council, which is typically attended by Permanent Representatives or their alternates. These ministers represented six countries in South America and three in Central America, all of whom had publicly expressed significant concern about the validity of the election that declared president Nicolás Maduro the winner.
Chaos ensued in Venezuela as thousands of people protested openly in the streets. Before the elections, polls had indicated that the opposition party’s candidate, Edmundo González, would win overwhelmingly. González is a surrogate for the vigorous María Corina Machado, who was banned by the Maduro government from running for the presidency but campaigned on González’s behalf.
While the government proclaimed Maduro’s victory and dismissed opposition claims that the results did not match the polling station tally sheets, local observer groups insisted that the government’s declaration was false. Of course, it is not uncommon for opposition parties to dispute election results worldwide if they lose, so the opposition’s claim alone was insufficient to prove the result was wrong.
However, the Carter Center, a reputable and internationally recognized organization invited by the Maduro government to observe the elections, also expressed serious concerns with the electoral process. It stated that the process “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages and violated numerous provisions of its own national laws,” and criticized the arbitrary decisions of The National Electoral Council (CNE) in not registering opposition candidacies.
Given the Maduro government’s contention that the election results were accurate and the conflicting claims of rigging, there was a need for verification of the votes cast to dispel any doubt concerning the validity of the results. Therefore, prior to the meeting of the Permanent Council, as chair, I circulated a draft resolution that recognized the large turnout of voters; acknowledged that the result was being disputed; recalled the agreement by the Venezuelan political parties in Barbados in October 2023 on political rights and electoral guarantees for all; and “urged” that the NEC “publish the presidential election voting results at the level of each polling station and conduct a comprehensive recount of votes in the presence of independent international observation organizations in a spirit of full transparency and to verify the result.”
This request was not unprecedented. In 2020, the OAS, Commonwealth, European Union (EU), and CARICOM made a similar request to Guyana to resolve an election dispute. To ensure full participation, I convened an informal meeting of all member states to discuss the draft resolution and seek consensus.
At an informal meeting of all OAS member states, prior to the formal Council meeting, the resolution was amended to include legal and institutional considerations, but one point of disagreement remained. Brazil objected to urging the NEC to conduct verification with “international observers,” arguing that such observation could only occur at the government’s invitation. This single point caused the draft resolution to flounder, despite consensus on urging the NEC to publish the voting results and conduct a comprehensive verification.
Five Latin American ministers, particularly Peru’s foreign minister, insisted on retaining the reference to international observers and stated that they would call for a vote in the Council, discarding attempts to adopt the resolution by consensus. Ultimately, the resolution was not adopted. While no country voted against it, five countries absented themselves, and eleven abstained, making the 17 votes in favour insufficient for an absolute majority. Nonetheless, many member states made clear their great unease with the situation in Venezuela. In terms of the 14 CARICOM states, four voted in favour, seven abstained and three absented themselves.
Since then, there have been many developments. On August 1, the governments of Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico called on the Venezuelan authorities to publish in an “expeditious way” the data “disaggregated by polling station” of the elections. This call was supported by the former president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, demonstrating that the left-leaning parties in Latin America also want verification of the election results.
On August 2, the heads of government of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), while congratulating Maduro on his election victory and calling for national reconciliation, also affirmed that they “stand on the principle that elections must be free as the expression of the will of the people and free from outside interference and they must be fair – contested in good faith and subject to the adjudication of independent mechanisms with relevant safeguards for verification and arbitration of any dispute.”
Further, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for “complete transparency” and “the timely publication of the election results and a breakdown by polling stations.” Significantly, Pope Francis has appealed to all parties “to seek the truth,” following assertions from two Venezuelan cardinals, Baltazar Porras and Diego Padrón, that the Maduro government may be “fabricating” election tallies “accommodating its interests” to supposedly prove that Maduro actually won the election.
It is now evident that while some countries, including in the Caribbean, want to demonstrate friendship to Maduro, who, along with the late president Hugo Chavez, provided an oil lifeline to them for ten years beginning at the global financial crisis in 2008, there is a mounting international clamour for the result of the July 28 elections to be verified. This outcry is driven principally by Venezuela’s neighbours in South and Central America, who have borne the brunt of accommodating nearly eight million Venezuelan refugees. Arrests of protestors since the election are also energizing the UN Human Rights organization and other international groups to demand action. The Venezuelan government has confirmed that more than 1,000 people have been arrested.
For peace to prevail in Venezuela and for the country’s relations with its immediate neighbours and the international community to improve and advance, verification of the election results is imperative. Both contenders in the election – Maduro and González – claim confidence in their victory; thus, both should welcome a verification process that will confirm their position.
(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS. The views expressed are entirely his own.)
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