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The US has declared Venezuela opposition candidate Edmundo González the winner of the July 28 presidential election, describing the official results favouring President Nicolás Maduro as “deeply flawed”.
Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, said on Thursday that “given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and . . . to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes” and congratulated him on his “successful campaign”.
Washington’s statement steps up the pressure on Maduro, who has launched a crackdown on nationwide protests this week against his disputed re-election. Maduro’s government responded by saying Washington was “at the forefront of an attempted coup d’état”, repeating a narrative the president has been using all week.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado’s headquarters in Caracas was broken into and vandalised overnight, her campaign said. “Six hooded men without identification overcame the security guards,” the campaign said in a post on X. “They threatened them and proceeded to spray paint, break down doors and take away equipment and documents.”
The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) said early on Monday that Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, had won 51.2 per cent of the vote to González’s 44.2 per cent. But the CNE provided no supporting evidence and has not responded to international pressure to do so.
The elections department of the Organization of American States has said the Venezuelan result cannot be recognised because of the lack of evidence. Maduro has referred the election dispute to the supreme court, which is controlled by the government. The court called all 10 candidates who stood in the election to appear before it on Friday.
The Carter Center, a US non-profit organisation and the only independent body in Venezuela to evaluate the election, withdrew its team on Tuesday without certifying the result, which it said “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages”.
The opposition collected as many official voting records from polling stations as it could and, based on these, declared González the victor and president-elect with 7.1mn votes, compared with 3.2mn for Maduro. It has published online 80 per cent of the voting receipts collected at polling stations as evidence.
Machado, who was banned from contesting the poll, has called for nationwide protests on Saturday in defence of González’s victory. “The country needs us to be strong, organised and mobilised,” she wrote on X.
González thanked the US on Friday for its recognition of his victory and “supporting the process of restoring democratic norms in Venezuela”.
But Maduro’s foreign minister Yvan Gil published a statement saying that “Venezuela denounces this perverse manoeuvre before the international community, governments and the world’s social movements”.
Blinken also called for the immediate release of all those arrested who were protesting against the result and said the safety and security of González, a 74-year-old former diplomat, and Machado must be protected. Maduro and members of his inner circle said in speeches this week that the pair should be jailed, and they are both in hiding.
Washington’s top diplomat said the threats represented an “undemocratic attempt to repress political participation and retain power”. Authorities in Venezuela arrested more than 1,000 people in connection with protests this week, while rights groups have said that at least 17 demonstrators were killed.
Maduro referred to González in speeches this week as “Guaidó 2.0”, a reference to Juan Guaidó, the opposition lawmaker who Washington and dozens of other western capitals recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate president after a 2018 election widely considered a sham. That effort to unseat Maduro ultimately failed, and Guaidó fled Venezuela in April last year.
Earlier on Thursday, leftwing governments in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico published a joint statement calling “on the electoral authorities of Venezuela to move forward expeditiously and make public the data broken down by voting table”, but stopped short of condemning Maduro.
Brazil has taken custody of the Argentine embassy in Caracas, where a group of Machado’s staff have sought refuge. The move followed the expulsion of Argentina’s diplomats from Venezuela after President Javier Milei denounced Maduro’s victory as a sham.
Shortly before Blinken’s announcement, Maduro published what he said was a secret agreement reached with the US during talks that took place in Qatar in September 2023, in which Washington agreed to lift sanctions, unfreeze Venezuelan assets abroad and re-establish diplomatic relations with Caracas following the election if conditions for a competitive electoral process were met. Washington has not confirmed the veracity of the text.
