Nicolas Maduro denounces a “coup”; US, UN, neighbouring countries and observers demand full breakdown of results

A few hours after the National Electoral Council (CNE) gave Nicolás Maduro his credential as the winner of Sunday’s voteVoices are being raised inside and outside Venezuela for the entity to allow a complete recount of the ballots. Some countries even ignored the official results or doubted them.

On Monday, upon receiving the proclamation of his victory at the CNE headquarters in Caracas, Maduro denounced a new attempt at a “coup d’état” against him, for which he blamed regional governments and an opposition sector, which he called “fascist ultra-right.” Maduro said that the alleged “coup” seeks to disown him, as happened 5 years ago.

“It is a kind of Guaidó 2.0 movie,” Maduro told observers and members of other Venezuelan institutions on Monday.

He was referring to the exiled opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself interim president after the previous elections, in which Maduro won a second term and many countries, such as the United States and others, did not recognize him.

Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE, reiterated that the Venezuelan electoral system is “the best in the world,” although he did not mention whether the electoral authority would soon publish the breakdown of the results. Early Monday morning, he promised to publish all the minutes of the 30,000 voting tables.

The opposition denounced a “gross fraud” and claimed that opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia had won the vote with 70% of the voters’ preference. Its spokesmen demanded access to all the minutes of each voting table to prove it.

On Monday, Attorney General Tarek William Saab accused three opposition leaders, including María Corina Machado, of orchestrating a cyber “attack” from North Macedonia against the electoral system.

Neighbors ask for a “complete review”

The administration of US President Joe Biden on Monday accused Venezuela of electoral manipulation and repression and said the result had stripped the process of “any credibility.”

The officials, who briefed reporters on the vote on condition of anonymity, did not announce new punitive measures, but They left the door open to additional sanctions.

A State Department spokesperson also called for “immediate release of detailed survey results to ensure transparency and accountability.”

Nine Latin American governments on Monday called for a “complete review” of the results of the presidential election in Venezuela and announced that they would request an urgent meeting of the Organization of American States to discuss the matter.

The executives of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay expressed their “deep concern” about the conduct of the elections and demanded that the review of the results be carried out with the presence of independent observers.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, for his part, declared his relations with Venezuela “on hold” and announced the withdrawal of diplomatic personnel from that nation, following Sunday’s election results.

Mulino denounced an “attempted institutional coup” in Venezuela.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for “complete” transparency in the election and encouraged the timely publication of results and a breakdown by polling station, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Guterres called for restraint from political leaders and their supporters, according to his spokesman.

The Carter Center, for its part, called in a statement for the CNE to immediately publish “detailed results” of Sunday’s election.

Celso Amorim, former Brazilian foreign minister and special envoy of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government to Venezuela, said he is “cautious” about the incomplete presentation of election results in the neighboring country.

The government “has given a number so far, but it has to show how it arrived at that number: minute by minute,” Amorim said, according to the newspaper O Globo.

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