Miami.- The Organization of American States failed to reach a consensus on Wednesday to pressure Venezuelan authorities to “immediately” publish and verify the results of the elections that declared Nicolás Maduro the winner, after several days of criticism for lack of transparency from international organizations and regional leaders such as his allies Gustavo Petro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The resolution urged Venezuela’s electoral authority “to immediately publish the results of the vote” and “to carry out a comprehensive verification of the results” in the presence of independent international observers “to ensure the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election results.”
But after a long debate lasting more than five hours behind closed doors, the representatives of the OAS countries were unable to reach a consensus and thus forced a vote in the Permanent Council of the OAS. There they were supposed to obtain an absolute majority of votes, but they did not obtain the 18 votes they needed for the bill to be approved. They were one vote short.
“We failed to send a strong message together,” said Council President Ronald Michael Sanders, representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the OAS, after announcing that the resolution had not been approved. “What was needed today was flexibility. Unfortunately, flexibility died at one point. That was regrettable.”
The call came a day after OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro urged Nicolás Maduro to acknowledge his defeat in the presidential election or call for a new election, and at a time when pressure seemed to be mounting among Latin American countries.
Sanders said the consensus could not be sealed by one sentence, but did not clarify what that was.
Brazil and Colombia, whose leaders had demanded transparency from the electoral authority in recent days, abstained. Mexico had already announced it would not be present.
A total of 17 members of the OAS Permanent Council voted in favor, 11 abstained and five were absent, including Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela itself, as well as Mexico. There were no votes against.
Bolivia and Honduras, among others, also abstained. Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and the United States, among others, voted in favor of the resolution.
Foreign pressure has been mounting since the National Electoral Council (CNE) officially proclaimed Maduro president on Monday, in his second re-election for a third six-year term, after announcing results that gave the president the electoral victory with 51% of the votes compared to 44% for the opposition candidate Edmundo González.
Thousands of opponents have taken to the streets of Venezuela to protest against this result.
The opposition, led by María Corina Machado y González, maintains that it won the elections by a substantial margin and is calling on the authorities to publish the electoral records.
Governments representing a broad political spectrum, from left to right, have joined the calls, including Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and the European Union, among others.
The session was held at the OAS headquarters in Washington and was convened by a dozen countries: Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the United States, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
The resolution also called for “absolute priority to safeguard Venezuela’s fundamental human rights,” primarily the right to peacefully protest without reprisals, and stressed “the importance of protecting and preserving all equipment used in the electoral process, including the printed minutes and results.”
Almagro, who spoke near the end of the three-and-a-half-hour session, said it was “completely inappropriate” and “devastating for democracy” that the authorities had not yet presented the minutes, three days after the elections.
He also said that there are witnesses who are being imprisoned and that it is time to bring charges against Maduro.
“There is premeditation and treachery, a course of action with such ferocity, superior advantage,” Almagro stressed. “It is time for justice and we are going to request the indictment of these charges with an arrest warrant,” he said, without giving details of how or where this will be done.
In the morning, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena would not be attending the meeting. “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.
The day before, Almagro’s office issued a statement in which it said that “it is imperative to know about Maduro’s acceptance of the minutes held by the opposition and consequently accept his electoral defeat.” If this is not done, it indicated, “it would be necessary to hold new elections” with international observers from the European Union and the OAS and new electoral authorities “to reduce the margin of institutional irregularity that plagued this process.”
Venezuela decided years ago to unilaterally withdraw from the OAS, but Almagro and the Permanent Council of the organization have still repeatedly addressed the country’s situation under the argument that this is helping democracy in the hemisphere.
Almagro has been very critical of Venezuela and other countries such as Nicaragua and Cuba.
Honduras has questioned the actions of the OAS, saying that it is not its responsibility to address the situation in Venezuela because it is not a member of the organization.
“When you listen to both sides of a conflict, you cannot be impartial,” said the representative of Honduras, Roberto Quesada. He also questioned Almagro’s statement the previous day, considering that it does not represent the position of all OAS members.
The Maduro government did not allow the OAS to send a delegation of observers to observe the elections. Only a handful of foreign experts were allowed: a small mission from the United Nations and another from the Carter Center, a US non-governmental institution that promotes democracy.
The Carter Center said it cannot verify the results of Venezuela’s disputed election and pointed to the electoral body’s “absence of transparency” in disseminating the results.
After Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Uruguay criticized the lack of transparency in the electoral process, the Venezuelan government ordered all of its diplomatic personnel in those nations to return and asked them to do the same with their staff in Venezuela.
The Argentine government has expressed concern about the situation of six members of Machado and González’s team who have taken refuge in its embassy in Caracas. Argentina is one of seven countries in the region that Venezuela has given a 72-hour deadline to vacate its diplomatic missions.
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