Bogota.- Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday rejected a congressional proposal urging him to recognize opposition leader Edmundo González as Venezuela’s legitimate president instead of Nicolás Maduro, a position that has been taken by other foreign governments such as the United States.
“The Colombian Congress, by constitutional order, cannot demand that the president take positions on international policy,” Petro said from his X account, formerly Twitter. “The proposal is a request and I will study it within the decisions that I have to make, always consulting, above all, the general interest of Colombian society,” he added.
Petro was reacting to a non-binding proposal that the Senate approved the day before with the support of 48 congressmen —several of them from sectors opposed to the government— and six against, in which he urged the president to publicly recognize González as the “undisputed winner” of the disputed presidential elections in Venezuela. This is a proposal that was also approved by the House of Representatives on August 16.
“It is imperative that the Colombian government adopt a clear and firm position in favor of democracy, aligning itself with the countries that have already rejected the fraudulent results,” stated the document approved by the Senate.
Colombia has avoided making statements that would commit it to declaring a winner in the disputed July 28 election results in Venezuela and joined Brazil and Mexico in trying to mediate the political crisis in Venezuela. The trio of countries has asked the Venezuelan electoral authority to show the presidential election results broken down by voting table.
Petro told reporters on Wednesday that the change of government in Mexico, with the inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum, and in the United States, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are competing in the electoral campaign, will be key to the diplomatic efforts of the three countries. The incoming governments “also become decisive in the path to a possible solution (in Venezuela)… so we will wait for the results,” he added.
While the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner for a third term, the opposition claimed to have in its hands at least 84% of the votes that would give González the victory by a wide margin.
Maduro also requested an expert appraisal of the results by the Supreme Court of Justice, an entity close to the government, which then certified “in an unrestricted and unequivocal manner” the same results given by the CNE.
González fled into exile in Spain on September 8, a few days after his arrest was ordered in Venezuela. From there, he claimed that he had been coerced by Maduro’s government into signing a letter in which he acknowledged his defeat in the elections, a version that was denied by Caracas.
The tension in Venezuela has an impact on the internal politics of Colombia, a country that is home to nearly three million Venezuelan migrants and where there have been protests by Venezuelans against Maduro. Some Colombian politicians have supported González and María Corina Machado and managed to bring the political discussion to Congress.
For Yann Basset, a professor of Political Science at the University of Rosario, there is a political standoff in Colombia in which Petro maintains his position and dismisses Congress, which tried to give a symbolic message, because it is the president who manages foreign policy in Colombia.
“The opposition accuses the government of giving Maduro air by not recognizing the fraud and of being on the side of the Venezuelan government,” Basset told The Associated Press. “They are trying to pressure the (Colombian) government and expose it so it takes a position. It is a message of Venezuelan solidarity and also part of the internal struggle in Colombia,” he added.
The relationship between Colombia and Venezuela was restored with the arrival to power of Petro in August 2022, who not only reestablished diplomatic and commercial ties with Maduro, but also left behind the critical stance towards Chavismo held by the conservative Iván Duque (2018-2022), who at the time recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela.
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