Democratic and Republican senators condemned members of the Organization of American States for failing to demand vote transparency in the elections in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro declared himself the winner even as countries across the world continue to denounce the regime for electoral fraud.
The OAS met in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday to approve a resolution urging the Maduro regime to release full and detailed vote tallies — which the Venezuelan government is required to do under the country’s constitution — as pro-democracy monitoring groups, including The Carter Center, say evidence shows the election was stolen.
However, the OAS failed to meet the necessary threshold for the resolution after several countries, including Colombia and Brazil, abstained from voting on it. The two countries neighbor Venezuela and are run by leftist governments that the U.S. and other international powers see as crucial in exerting pressure on Maduro.
“It’s outrageous that they abstained,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Clearly, standing on the sidelines and abstaining against such a gross theft of an election, that’s no position, I think, any self-respecting nation can be in for a long time.”
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Sen. Rick Scott told NOTUS he was “disappointed” by the outcome of the OAS meeting. “I was hoping that, you know, people who believe in democracy would all be supportive of, you know, a fair election.”
Scott said the abstentions just show the “true colors” of the leadership in Colombia and Brazil.
The U.S. formally recognized Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of the election on Thursday night.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a Maduro ally, said on Thursday that “foreign governments should not be the ones to decide who is the president of Venezuela.” Instead, he said it’s up to Venezuelans to reach “a political agreement” for violence to end in the country and to “establish a transparent way in which the results can be scrutinized while respecting people’s rights.” Days before, he had called for transparency in the Venezuelan electoral process.
Similarly, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, another ally of Maduro, told President Joe Biden this week that “it is essential” that the regime release the election tallies, per a press release from the Brazilian government.
Sen. Marco Rubio said the countries that abstained because they were against intervention had no place in the OAS.
“Why are they even part of the OAS? What’s the purpose of it?” Rubio told NOTUS. “The purpose of the OAS is to protect democracy. That’s why it exists.”
Sen. Ted Cruz suggested that because Petro and Lula are leftists, they should not be trusted even though they have called for transparency, particularly after their ambassadors did not support the OAS resolution.
“Let’s be clear, ambassadors don’t abstain until their bosses tell them to,” the Texas senator said.
“This is a crisis [not just] for democracy in Venezuela but throughout the hemisphere,” Sen. Chris Murphy told NOTUS. “The United States, you know, can lead, but it’s really the leftist governments in South America that have the potential to move the needle here. So we need, you know, Lula, Petro and others to step up at this moment or, you know, the contagion in Venezuela is going to continue to spread.”
Kaine, though, said the abstentions from Colombia and Brazil in particular could be because “they possibly are kind of trying to maintain some open dialogue about this,” but the U.S. should go back to the OAS and try to get more countries “on board” with a joint resolution to demand transparency.
Ronald Sanders, chair of the OAS Permanent Council, expressed disappointment during Wednesday’s meeting over the resolution not being approved.
“Flexibility was what we needed today. Unfortunately, flexibility died on one point and one point only. That was regrettable, and I, like everybody else, lament the fact that we did not achieve it,” Sanders said, seemingly referring to a specific part of the resolution demanding a verification process be conducted under the supervision of international monitoring agencies, which some countries oppose.
“How much time are we going to give [the Maduro regime] so that the tallies are released? Do we give them two more days? Two more weeks? Two more months? How much time do they need?” said OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. Waiting for more time, he added, is “devastating to democracy.”
Maduro’s electoral body announced on Monday that he had won with 51% of the vote, compared to 44% received by opposition candidate González. However, opposition leader María Corina Machado — who was barred from running by the regime — said her allies had acquired 81% of the tallies directly from polling stations that show González getting nearly 70% of the vote.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.
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