In the international field, the flagrant violation of the political rights of Venezuelan society by the regime led by Nicolas Maduro has had serious consequences for its stability of government. From the first moment, numerous States and international organizations raised their voices in response to the obvious: Maduro cannot claim to proclaim himself president of Venezuela without the complete and disaggregated results of the election being presented.
However, things have become even more complicated when Maduro has radicalized violence against his opponents, who, judging by what appears from the voting records held by the opposition, are approximately 70% of those who participated in the electoral event, doubling the vote obtained by the ruling party. Thus, arbitrary detentions, evidence of torture, the forced disappearance of political leaders and, in an unprecedented turn, numerous cases of torture and detention of minors have become commonplace.
The regime has opted for the hard road: instead of facing defeat and complying with the provisions of the law regarding the public presentation of the electoral results, it has begun a chain of actions aimed at generating terror in the citizens and, at the same time, going – in the international arena – from aggressive statements to a desperate discourse that not only obviates diplomacy, but also configures a kind of exaltation of microphone politics, full of insults, profanities and threats.
This conduct has reinforced the conviction of the international community that electoral fraud has dynamited the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro for the purposes of the inauguration of the next constitutional period that must take place in January 2025. The leaders who have expressed their disapproval of this fraud have received not only insults, but also the breaking of diplomatic relations and the withdrawal of the accreditation of their missions in the country.
Among the most relevant cases is that of the Argentine Embassy, which received the asylum request from a group of members of the campaign command of the opposition party Vente Venezuela and shortly afterward its diplomatic officials were expelled from the country. Subsequently, the Brazilian Embassy was in charge of guarding the Argentine diplomatic headquarters, which suffered power and water outages, as well as the threatening presence of police and military squads, until the government announced the withdrawal of the authorization granted to Brazil, whose Foreign Ministry, according to the Spanish newspaper El País, reminded Venezuela that, according to the Vienna Convention, “Brazil will maintain the custody and defense of Argentine interests until the Argentine Government indicates another State that the Venezuelan government considers acceptable to exercise the aforementioned functions.” Lula’s government also warned Maduro’s government against the temptation to attack the legation to arrest Machado’s collaborators by underlining “the inviolability of the facilities of the Argentine diplomatic mission, which currently houses six Venezuelan asylum seekers.” The authorization was reestablished once President Luiz Inacio Da Silva personally intervened.
Another decisive point in the events after the July 28 election has been that which has taken place in the organization of American States, which has issued a resolution urging the presentation of the voting records as the only mechanism for resolving the complex situation of Venezuela. The organization subsequently received the presentation made by the Carter Center, which served as an electoral observer during the process, and it has communicated its evaluation of the event, as well as the minutes in its possession, which unequivocally reflect the victory of the candidate González Urrutia.
Given the situation that has arisen, in which the national electoral body simply refuses to reveal the disaggregated electoral results, as indicated by law, this fact, the formal presentation of the Carter Center’s conclusions before a most relevant international organization, with the corresponding official minutes delivered by the CNE to the parties participating in the election and containing the agreed verification mechanisms, constitute an unavoidable legitimizing element of such a result.
This is what the European Union has assumed, whose commissioner for foreign relations, Josep Borrell, has declared “…these minutes, together with those presented by the opposition, reflect a result that we have always pointed out, that Maduro did not win the elections and that the opposition leader, now a refugee in Spain, won them…” Borrell has gone further, adding that “… the solution to the crisis that is taking place in Venezuela can only be through political means and that it must arise from international pressure. ..”
Thus, the international community has responded to the violation of the political rights of Venezuelans and to the wave of repression that has increased since the election, but the crisis is not resolved and, on the contrary, is getting worse every day. There has been a fundamental advance, going from demanding that the National Electoral Council “present the minutes” to the assumption of the fact that the minutes presented by the opposition are official documents, issued by the electoral authority and that show all the certificates of security, therefore, constitute the very evidence of the electoral result.
Repression must stop, torture of minors, forced disappearances, rigged and defenseless trials, terror as a mechanism of domination. To achieve this, it is essential that international actors maintain the demand for respect for the popular will expressed in the election, so that it is possible to advance on the path of democratic restitution.