AP, AFP and Sputnik
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 1, 2024, p. 25
Washington. The Organization of American States (OAS) failed yesterday to reach a consensus and also failed to achieve an absolute majority of its member states in a vote to pressure Venezuelan authorities to publish immediately the election results that declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner, after several days of criticism from the United States, some Latin American countries and international organizations.
The failed draft resolution urged Venezuela’s National Electoral Council to publish immediately the results of the vote and a comprehensive verification of the results is carried out in the presence of independent international observers to ensure transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the results.
After a debate lasting more than five hours behind closed doors, representatives of the OAS countries failed to reach a consensus and forced a vote in the Permanent Council. There they were supposed to obtain an absolute majority of votes, but they also failed to obtain the 18 they needed for the bill to be approved. They were one vote short, none voted against and 11 abstained.
The meeting began more than two and a half hours late due to disagreements over a phrase in the draft resolution, lamented the president of the Permanent Council, the US ambassador to the hemispheric mechanism, Ronald Sanders, without giving details.
Five countries, including Venezuela (which asked to leave the OAS, but this has not been done), rejected the invitation.
The 17 countries that voted in favor were: Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Suriname and Uruguay.
The 11 abstentions came from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominica, Grenada, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia.
Mexico boycotted the session.
In this context, the head of US diplomacy for the Western Hemisphere, Brian Nichols, stated before the OAS that the opposition candidate in Venezuela, Edmundo González Urrutia, defeated Maduro.
Nichols validated the electoral records shared on the Internet by civil society organizations and the opposition, which claims to have suffered fraud, and said: It is clear that Edmundo González Urrutia defeated Nicolás Maduro by millions of votes
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the patience of the White House and the international community is running out. exhausting with Venezuela, Waiting for the electoral authorities to tell the truth and publish the detailed data of these elections.
Meanwhile, a United Nations mission said it has credible information on arrests and deaths in protests after election day.
For the Carter Center, one of the international observers, The fact that the electoral authority has not announced results broken down by polling station constitutes a serious violation of electoral principles..
He noted that the elections did not meet international standards of integrity at any of their relevant stages and violated numerous provisions of national legislation.
The G-7 called the competent authorities to publish detailed election results in full transparency.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that the Venezuelan authorities They must stop arrests, repression and violent rhetoric against opposition members. Threats against González Urrutia and María Corina Machado are unacceptable.he stated on the social network X.
The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, made A firm call for calm, civility and the guarantee of the fundamental rights of all Venezuelans.