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Venezuela’s neighbours struggle to respond to crisis following disputed election

There are few means to pressure Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial regime that is once again ramping up domestic repression

Detained protesters are transported to a detention center in Caracas, Venezuela, on Thursday. Photograph: Alejandro Cegarra/ New York Times
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Tom Hennigan in São Paulo
Fri Aug 02 2024 - 17:35

The stand-off in Venezuela that has followed Sunday’s disputed presidential election is once again exposing the fragmented nature of diplomatic relations in the western hemisphere, with regional governments struggling to co-ordinate a response to the crisis.

Given the overwhelming evidence the leftist regime stole victory from opposition candidate Edmundo González when it declared incumbent president Nicolás Maduro the winner, there is little surprise that the country’s electoral council has failed to follow through on commitments and publish detailed results. The opposition insists this breakdown would clearly show it won.

Maduro is still promising these results will emerge but authorities have claimed, despite providing no evidence, a cyber attack on the voting system originating in North Macedonia – but involving opposition leader María Corina Machado – is responsible for the delay.

[ Tom Hennigan: Venezuela's plight likely to deepen after Maduro's dubious win ]

This has prompted a small observer mission from the election monitoring organisation the Carter Center to say the election “cannot be considered democratic” and the failure to produce tallies “constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles”.

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That was enough for the Biden administration to formally declare González the winner of Sunday’s vote and call for talks on a peaceful transition of power. But Washington’s leverage over Caracas is limited and the last time it recognised an opposition leader as Venezuela’s legitimate president, Juan Guaidó in 2019, its policy ended in failure.

The US move comes after Caracas expelled ambassadors from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic over their governments questioning Maduro’s victory. This, allied to the expressions of support Caracas has received from the dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua and a smattering of leftist governments such as those in Bolivia and Honduras, has further complicated efforts to come up with a regional response.

This is now being led by Brazil and Colombia, respectively Latin America’s most powerful state and the one hosting the most Venezuelan refugees, and both run by left-wing presidents who have in the past sought to keep open lines of communication with Maduro.

But the effort so far is ad hoc as regional bodies are largely moribund. Unasur, the Union of South American Nations which was created to deepen regional integration, is all but defunct. Mercosur, Latin America’s largest trade bloc that Venezuela once flirted with joining, is currently paralysed by Argentina’s de facto boycott of the group since the election of radical libertarian Javier Milei as president last year. He is yet to meet his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, freezing one of the main channels of regional diplomacy as Milei chooses ideological grandstanding over maintaining his country’s principle strategic partnership.

Following the announcement of the presidential election results that declared Nicolás Maduro the victor, mass protests have erupted across Venezuela.

Lula has already taken heavy political flak at home for failing to call out Maduro’s fraud. But his administration’s efforts to resolve the crisis have received thanks from Venezuelan opposition leaders. On Thursday a joint statement released by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico once again called for the release of a detailed breakdown of the election results as demanded by the opposition.

The dilemma for Lula and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro is that they have not signalled what they might do should Maduro fail to comply. With Venezuela’s economy already devastated and regionally isolated except from its criminal networks, there are few means to pressure a dictatorial regime that is once again ramping up domestic repression to see off another effort to remove it from power. As the opposition called for more protests on Saturday, Maduro said authorities had already arrested 1,200 people and vowed “we will arrest 1,000 more”.

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