Sao Paulo.- Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Monday morning that he still does not recognize his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro as the winner of last month’s presidential election and that the Venezuelan leader could call a new vote “if he has common sense.”
“Maduro still has six months left in his term. He is the president regardless of the elections. If he has common sense, he could call on the people of Venezuela, perhaps even call new elections, create an electoral committee and allow observers from around the world to monitor it,” Lula stressed in an interview with Radio T.
He added that Maduro still owes an explanation to the Brazilians and the rest of the world.
Shortly afterward, in a virtual press conference with Argentine and Chilean media, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado rejected Lula’s proposal.
“There will be a second election, if they don’t like the results, why are we going to a third one?” said Machado. “To suggest ignoring what happened on July 28 is an insult to the Venezuelan people… The elections have already taken place,” he added.
Brazil is by far the largest nation in South America and shares one of the largest land borders with Venezuela. Unlike many other nations that have already recognized Maduro or the opposition leader Edmundo González as the winner, the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have taken a more neutral stance by not recognizing or accepting when Venezuelan electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner.
In a joint statement, the three countries called on Venezuela’s electoral body to release tens of thousands of voting records, which are considered definitive proof of the results.
During Lula’s administration, Brazil has been a key mediator, including in the Barbados Agreement reached in October, when Maduro’s government and the political opposition reached an agreement on a new election that led to relief from U.S. sanctions.
Celso Amorim, Lula’s closest international adviser and a former foreign minister, traveled to Caracas in July as an observer of the election. Speaking before a Senate committee Thursday morning, Amorim said a new election would have to be verified in a solid and robust manner.
Venezuelan law allows a new vote whenever the National Electoral Council or judicial authorities annul an election deemed fraudulent or whose result was impossible to determine. The new election must take place within six to 12 months under the same conditions as the annulled vote and the same candidates must appear on the ballot.
Logistics, laws and costs aside, a new election will be a risky gamble for Maduro and his allies, as the July vote and ensuing protests showed they have lost support nationwide and can no longer rely on a cadre of die-hard supporters, known as “Chavistas,” as well as public employees and others whose businesses or jobs depend on the state, to comfortably defeat their opponents.
Machado said that the best option for Maduro “is to accept the terms of a negotiated transition” after recognizing González’s electoral victory and maintained that in the opposition “we are willing to carry out a negotiation process with safeguards, guarantees.”
Although electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner of the highly anticipated election, they have yet to present a detailed vote count to back up their claim. However, the opposition revealed that it collected tally sheets from more than 84% of the 30,000 electronic voting machines across the country showing that Maduro lost by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
An AP review of the released tally sheets indicates Gonzalez won significantly more votes than the government has claimed. The analysis casts serious doubt on the official declaration of Maduro’s victory.
The AP processed nearly 24,000 images representing results from 79 percent of the voting machines, resulting in tabulations of 10.26 million votes. The processed tallies also showed that Gonzalez received more votes on 20,476 receipts compared to just 3,157 for Maduro.
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