White House walks back Biden’s comments on new elections in Venezuela
President Joe Biden caused a stir on Thursday when he appeared to say he supports holding new presidential elections in Venezuela, following similar comments by his Brazilian counterpart earlier in the day.
The South American nation is consumed by a political crisis after the Venezuelan National Electoral Council declared the country’s strongman, Nicolas Maduro, as the winner of the July 28 election, with numbers widely believed to be fraudulent and contested by the opposition.
On Thursday, a Voice of America reporter asked Biden, “Do you support new elections in Venezuela?” to which he replied, “I do,” during brief comments to reporters in the afternoon at the White House.
Earlier on Thursday, Brazil’s president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, proposed that Maduro form a coalition government with the opposition or call for new presidential elections as possible solutions to the political crisis — ideas that the Venezuelan opposition has forcefully rejected.
However, a National Security Council spokesperson said Biden was not calling for a new election but “speaking to the absurdity of Maduro and his representatives not coming clean about the July 28 elections” when he answered the question.
“It is abundantly clear to the majority of the Venezuelan people, the United States, and a growing number of countries that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (the opposition candidate) won the most votes on July 28,” the spokesperson said. “The United States again calls for the will of the Venezuelan people to be respected and for discussions to begin on a transition back to democratic norms.”
Before the clarification and following media reports about Biden’s response suggesting he favored new elections, Gonzalez said on X: “The presidential elections in Venezuela were held on July 28 and were overwhelmingly won by Edmundo González Urrutia. We reiterate our commitment to democracy, peace and Venezuela.”
Several countries, including the United States and Brazil, have not recognized Maduro’s victory and have urged the Venezuelan National Electoral Council to release a detailed vote tabulation. The Biden administration has said it supports efforts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to facilitate talks between Maduro and the opposition. However, the White House has not called Gonzalez “president-elect” and avoids explicitly calling him the “winner” of the election, despite acknowledging that he won most of the votes.
But Lula’s call for new elections, echoed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro in a publication on X, adds to the doubts about their mediation efforts because Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has reiterated that the opposition will not negotiate the electoral results nor share power with Maduro.
“So we are going to a second election. If they don´t like the results, are we going to a third, fourth or fifth election until Maduro likes the result? Would you accept that in your countries?” she told reporters after Lula’s comments to Brazilian Radio T were published Thursday morning.
“There were people who risked their lives to prove the fraud,” Machado said. “People who were murdered. To ignore that is disrespectful. Popular sovereignty is to be respected.”
Speaking of Brazil and Colombia’s efforts to find a solution to the crisis, Lula suggested Maduro “can form a coalition government with the opposition” or call for new elections.
“Maduro still has six months left in his term,” Lula said. “He is the president regardless of the election. If he has good sense, he could call upon the people of Venezuela, perhaps even call for new elections, create an electoral committee and allow observers from around the world to monitor.”
The Brazilian and Colombian presidents had a call Wednesday to discuss the situation in Venezuela, followed by meetings of their foreign ministers Thursday. Mexico was supposed to join the discussions, but its president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seems to have pulled back from the diplomatic effort.
On the diplomatic front, the U.S is also pushing to pass a resolution at the Organization of American States condemning the violence after the elections and urging Venezuelan electoral authorities to release the vote tabulation. But it is unclear yet if Brazil would support it. A similar resolution failed to pass shortly after the election.
On Thursday, Colombian President Petro said on X that it was Maduro’s call to accept “an internal political agreement in Venezuela” as “the best path to peace.” He then listed what appeared to be some of the main points of such an agreement: “Lifting of all sanctions against Venezuela, general national and international amnesty, full guarantees for political action, transitional cohabitation government, new free elections.”
Such a plan would require that the Biden administration lift sanctions on Venezuela and give amnesty to Maduro, who is wanted in the U.S. for narco-trafficking. Biden administration officials said the U.S. government had not offered amnesty to Maduro but was considering a range of options to facilitate a transition to democracy in Venezuela. Though Machado has rejected some of the conditions listed by Petro, she has said the opposition was willing to offer “incentives” and “safeguards” to get the Maduro regime to the negotiating table.
Maduro, who is supported by Russia, China and Cuba, remains defiant. He has dismissed talks about negotiations, threatened Machado and Gonzalez with prison, and arrested at least 1,260 people, including 160 women and more than 100 children, according to U.N. experts.
In his radio interview, the Brazilian president said he “still did not” recognize Maduro’s electoral victory but also did not acknowledge the evidence of the vote presented by the opposition and validated by the Carter Center and other independent entities, showing that opposition candidate Gonzalez won in a landslide with 67% of the vote.
The Atlanta-based Carter Center, which had people in Venezuela to observe the voting said the data in the paper tallies printed by the voting stations in Venezuela is “identical” to the data the electoral council already has but has not disclosed.
“Those who want the opposition to win, I can’t say the opposition won because I don’t have the data. And I can’t say Maduro won because I don’t have the data,” Lula said. He urged the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, which has not presented the tabulation of the vote despite calls by the international community, to say “who won.”
Maduro “knows he owes an explanation to his people and the world,” he said.
This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 4:23 PM.