The situation in Venezuela remains very dicey and dangerous. The U.S. State Department-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) has already issued a 23-page document declaring that the July 28 elections were fraudulent and therefore cannot be recognized. The OAS Permanent Council has convened an emergency meeting for today called for by the nine countries that don’t recognize the electoral results “to discuss the results of the electoral process in Venezuela.” The meeting is likely to be contentious. Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondio will put forward President Javier Milei’s demand there be a “unified regional response” to alleged Venezuelan fraud. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced yesterday he won’t send his foreign minister to the meeting because the OAS is a “biased” and “interventionist” body and “doesn’t represent the nations of America.”
On the ground, opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is the power behind candidate Edmundo González, is trying to whip people up into a frenzy with charges that government forces have killed 16 people and arbitrarily arrested 117. In a press conference yesterday, Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López accused opposition gangs of setting fire to government buildings and attacking the National Electoral Council (CNE).
In all of this, Brazilian President Lula da Silva has been a voice of reason. In a phone call initiated by Joe Biden yesterday, Lula told him he’d been closely watching Venezuelan developments through his special adviser Celso Amorim, who has met in Caracas with Maduro and with Edmundo González. Brazil’s position, he said, is to continue working toward the “normalization of Venezuela’s political process,” according to the readout from Brazil’s Presidential website.
This, he said, would have a positive impact on the whole region. He also stressed the importance of Venezuela’s CNE releasing the final vote tallies. Amorim had told Financial Times that he expected them to be released either today or tomorrow. Prior to speaking with Biden, Argentina’s Página 12 reported, Lula was also interviewed by TV Centro America, part of the Globo network, during which he said it was “normal” for there to be tension during an election, but insisted this could be resolved with the publication of the official vote tallies. “It’s normal there would be a fight,” he said, but release of the vote tallies would mean that if there are doubts, the opposition can go to the courts, whose rulings people would have to accept. If the results announced by the CNE are confirmed, “we all have the obligation to accept them.” He criticized the press coverage of this situation, saying it’s being treated “as if it were a Third World War.” In reality, he added, what’s happening in Venezuela is nothing to fear. “The situation is absolutely normal and the elections were carried out peacefully.”
