(Bloomberg) -- The US said the world should acknowledge that Venezuela’s opposition won last weekend’s election while President Nicolas Maduro doubled down on his claims of victory, saying his opponents should be jailed for decades.
“Everyone can see — it is clear that Edmundo González Urrutia defeated Nicolas Maduro by millions of votes,” Brian Nichols, the top US diplomat for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington. The world’s governments should acknowledge Gonzalez’s “overwhelming” victory, he said Wednesday.
Maduro has been ratcheting up his rhetoric against González and María Corina Machado, the former legislator his government barred from running in Sunday’s election. At a news conference, the socialist leader said they “should be behind bars” for allegedly promoting post-election violence and seeking to destabilize his government.
“Ms. Machado, where are you? Why don’t you show your face, after so much outrage and violence?” Maduro said, building on top lawmaker Jorge Rodríguez’s call for her arrest on Tuesday following demonstrations.
Machado later responded to the comments by Nichols, saying it was a “very important” confirmation of Gonzalez’s victory and backed his call for greater transparency in the vote tabulation.
The opposition leaders say they have overwhelming proof that González is the rightful election winner, citing evidence from more than 80% of the country’s polling stations. Venezuela’s electoral body said Maduro took about 51% of the vote.
Earlier Wednesday, Maduro requested that Venezuela’s high court take over auditing of the voting data from the electoral board. The move ignores calls from President Joe Biden’s administration, governments from the Group of Seven and allies Colombia and Brazil to allow transparent accounting of the results, increasing doubts of the legitimacy of the vote.
Venezuela’s top judicial body has for years been controlled by regime loyalists who have issued favorable decisions on issues from expropriations by the state to the banning of opposition political candidates.
The disputed election outcome and the latest US statements make it increasingly unlikely that the Biden administration will consider easing economic sanctions any time soon. That would leave Venezuela cut off from international capital markets and delay efforts to deal with some $150 billion of defaulted bonds, loans and legal judgments owed to creditors from Wall Street to China.
Maduro’s move Wednesday “points to further radicalization and little leeway to negotiate any exit or transition, so the only path forward seems an escalation of the conflict,” Ramiro Blazquez, head of research at BancTrust & Co., said by email.
Venezuela’s electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro appointees, said early Monday morning the incumbent president defeated opposition rival González by a margin of 51% to 44% of the votes. González and Machado, for whom he is standing in, immediately disputed that.
The opposition says it has now gathered 84% of voting tabulations to prove González is the rightful winner in Sunday’s election. The Carter Center, the sole observer of international repute that monitored the election, said late Tuesday the vote “cannot be considered democratic.”
On Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, said “our patience, and that of the international community, is running out,” adding that the electoral authority needed to “come clean” and release the voting data.
In his address, Maduro said he respected Biden and his decision to step out of the country’s election this year. But, he pressed, “How come you say you have lost patience with Venezuela? Then I’ve lost it with you. This is David versus Goliath.”
--With assistance from Fabiola Zerpa and Marcelo Rochabrun.
(Recasts with new US position on result of vote from first paragraph.)
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