The Diplomat
The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, yesterday called for “total transparency” in Venezuela, for all electoral records to be published and verified, after the elections in that country.
Albares made these statements in statements to Cadena Ser, when asked about the data provided by the Venezuelan National Electoral Council that gave 51.2 percent of the votes to Nicolas Maduro and 44.2 percent to the opposition candidate, headed by Edmundo González Urrutia.
“Venezuelans voted yesterday democratically in a very large majority. We want total transparency and that is why we are asking for the publication of the minutes table by table. We do not have a candidate. We want transparency to be guaranteed. The key is the publication of the data table by table so that they can be verified,” said the minister.
Albares indicated that the counting is still “at a very early stage” and insisted that “every vote” must be counted. “We hope that throughout the day we will have more complete information,” he declared.
The Foreign Minister asked “that the calm, tranquility and democratic sense that prevailed on election day be maintained,” and pointed out that the Spanish Government is in contact with “sister countries” in the area, as well as with the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.
“We ask for total transparency so that this data can be certified,” said the minister in statements to Cadena SER. Albares explained that we are still “in a very early stage of the counting” in Venezuela, although he insisted that “every vote” must be counted. “We hope that throughout the day we will have more complete information.”
And on his account on the social network X, Albares wrote: “The democratic will of the people of Venezuela must be respected with the presentation of the minutes of all the electoral tables to guarantee fully verifiable results. We ask that the calm and civility with which the electoral day took place be maintained.”
In the same vein, Josep Borrell wrote: “The people of Venezuela voted on the future of their country in a peaceful and massive manner. Their will must be respected. It is vital to ensure the total transparency of the electoral process, including the detailed counting of votes and access to the voting records of polling stations.”
The Carter Center, specialized in election observation, also asked the National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) to publish the minutes “table by table.”
For his part, former Prime Minister Felipe González said that “it is not credible that the announced results reflect the will of the Venezuelan people expressed yesterday at the polls.” He said: “It is vital to ensure the validity of the electoral process, including the detailed counting of votes and the delivery of each and every one of the voting records from the polling stations to the opposition witnesses.”
González added that “once the records have been verified, one by one, the results must be verified and compared with the information obtained from the automated processes.” Finally, he expressed his conviction that “only by carrying out these processes will it be possible to guarantee verifiable results and to respect the democratic will of the citizens of Venezuela.”
The Venezuelan opposition has rejected the data provided by the National Electoral Council and several Ibero-American leaders have also expressed their reservations, including the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who said that he will not recognize any result that is not verifiable” and said that the vote count “is difficult to believe.”
The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said, for his part, that he has “well-founded reasons” to think that there has been fraud in the elections. On the social network X he wrote: “Venezuela voted yesterday massively in peace in favor of a transition to freedom. There are well-founded reasons to think that the result announced by the regime does not correspond to what the people voted for.”
He also demanded “an audit of the process, the delivery of the electoral records,” as well as “the acceptance of the result” by the government.
The PP’s general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, on the other hand, demanded that Pedro Sánchez’s government call the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela for consultations to provide explanations on the arrangements made during the trip of a PP delegation, which was expelled after arriving in Caracas invited by the Venezuelan opposition. Gamarra asked Minister Albares “if he is with Maduro or with the Spanish democrats,” and accused him of using the same arguments as the Chavista regime.
In addition, the PP spokesperson announced that they will request that the head of the observatory of the delegation accredited by the “Maduro regime,” the former president of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, appear before the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee to “explain how he has reached the conclusion that Maduro has won because the data does not match at all with the counting of the minutes.” According to Gamara, “these images and photographs of Zapatero with Maduro demonstrate what the PSOE is supporting, hand in hand with a former president, which embarrasses democrats everywhere in the world.
Other Spanish political parties also spoke out, questioning the results. Thus, the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, stated that “not even the most colossal fraud” can hide the “success” of the opposition in Venezuela. And, for its part, the PNV issued a statement in which it demanded “total transparency” and that all the minutes of the vote count be made public “table by table.”
On the other hand, Izquierda Unida urged the Venezuelan opposition to recognise Maduro’s victory in an election that it considers to have been held “with all the guarantees and international observers.” “Democracy is respected,” it wrote on the social network X. IU, which is part of Sumar, a partner of the PSOE government, congratulated Maduro on the results, and the leader of that coalition and second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, said that “the election results must be recognised” in Venezuela, although she defended that action be taken with “transparency” if there are doubts about the vote count.
The vice president’s words served Nicolás Maduro to include Spain in the list of countries that have recognized his victory in the elections.
“On behalf of the Venezuelan people, we thank the Government of Spain for recognizing the 2024 Presidential Elections held yesterday in our country,” said Maduro on his account on the social network X, in which he included a link to the statements made by Díaz at a press conference. Hours later, however, Maduro deleted that message of thanks to the Spanish Executive.
On the contrary, the Bolivarian regime demanded that Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay withdraw “immediately” their representatives in Venezuelan territory, after they did not recognize the results provided by the National Council Electoral. Maduro takes the measure, which means breaking with all of them, criticizing “interventionist actions and statements by a group of right-wing governments subordinated to Washington and openly committed to the most sordid ideological postulates of international fascism.”
In Spain, where it is estimated that there are some 400,000 Venezuelans living, only 25,000 were able to vote, according to complaints from the opposition, which points out that the large number of bureaucratic obstacles has made it impossible for the great majority of them to exercise their right to vote. “The majority of Venezuelans who have had to go into exile are against the regime and what it wants is to minimise a possible defeat by preventing them from voting,” said the president of the Venezuelan Platform in Bilbao, Pedro Gil, to ‘Europa Press’
