On July 28, the Venezuelan people were the protagonists of a heroic deed, which they will tell their children and grandchildren for years to come. In the face of all the obstacles and threats, the people voted en masse, peacefully and democratically, and also remained at the polling stations to guarantee the transparency of the process and the custody of the voting records. On that day, Venezuelans truly lived up to the first stanza of their national anthem, “Glory to the Brave People!”
As if that were not enough, María Corina Machado, unexpectedly and quietly, implemented a brilliant strategy: the scanning and transmission of more than 80% of the tally sheets, with the signatures of the witnesses and the corresponding QR codes. They were then uploaded to the website www.resultadosconvzla.com so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could view them.
The election results were devastating for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Edmundo González had given Chavismo a real thrashing, winning 67% of the vote to Maduro’s 30%. Cornered by such circumstances, Maduro had himself proclaimed the winner by a servile National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE), without presenting the official results, and unleashed the bloodbath he had threatened during the election campaign.
What happened in Venezuela has become a major problem for the international Left. One of its main allies, the ‘son of Chávez,’ had committed a monumental fraud in broad daylight and was massacring the people. How was damage control to be done so that the Left did not go down with Maduro?
It was then that the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group deployed three of their main heavyweights, Brazilian President Lula, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who set about the task of changing the facts through their specialty: inventing narratives. They proclaimed themselves mediators of the Venezuelan crisis and began to divert attention from what happened on July 28.
The first step was to ignore the official minutes presented by the opposition and ‘demand’ that the electoral authorities present them, but without setting a deadline or denouncing that the CNE was biassed in favour of Maduro, as the Carter Center did. This indefinite deadline allowed the dictator to crush the protests, instil terror, and order trials against María Corina Machado and Edmundo González to force them to take refuge, that is, to isolate themselves from the people.
The second step was to convince the United States and the European Union to wait for the CNE to present the results and not recognise Edmundo González as president-elect (as Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Uruguay had already done), because, according to the trio, recognising González “hindered the negotiations.” They also played a leading role in sabotaging an OAS (Organization of American States) resolution against Maduro.
The third step was to try to restrict President Milei’s role by expelling diplomatic officials from the Argentine embassy, where six members of María Corina Machado’s team had sought asylum. Lula took advantage of this situation to assume their ‘protection.’ Both Milei and María Corina Machado were obliged to thank him for the gesture. Evidently, the Brazilian president could have demanded safe conduct for them from Maduro, but he did not.
And the fourth step, currently in full swing, has been to launch proposals to the international community to cover up the crime committed by Maduro, such as repeating the elections or establishing direct negotiations between the dictator and Edmundo González, but without the participation of María Corina Machado. The intention behind this manoeuvre is to fracture the opposition’s unity and raise the spectre of betrayal.
In short, the supposed mediation of this trio has only served to give Maduro oxygen, paralyse the international community, and weaken the opposition.
The solution to the Venezuelan crisis is to dismiss the narratives spread by Lula, López Obrador, and Petro and return to the facts. It is urgent to denounce the bloody coup d’état carried out by Maduro, to validate the official results found on www.resultadosconvzla.com, and then to recognise Edmundo González as president-elect.
This trio of self-appointed mediators must be set aside, or at least balanced with other reliable negotiators, who offer Maduro conditions for him to recognise his defeat and leave the country, guaranteeing his safety and that of his family members.
(*) Author of the book “Los Fraudes Electorales del Foro de Sao Paulo” (The Electoral Frauds of the Sao Paulo Forum).
