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The US government has recognized Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the “president-elect” of the South American country, months after President Nicolás Maduro claimed to have won the July contest.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, recognized González in a post on X in which he also demanded “respect for the will” of Venezuelan voters.
Joe Biden’s administration had previously said González earned the most votes in the disputed 28 July election, but fell short of acknowledging him as president-elect.
“The Venezuelan people spoke resoundingly on July 28 and made [González] the president-elect,” wrote Blinken.
González fled to exile in Spain earlier this month, later telling reporters that he had been coerced into signing a letter recognizing Maduro as the winner of the disputed election as a condition for letting him leave Venezuela.
Venezuela’s national electoral council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, had declared Maduro the election winner hours after polls closed. Unlike previous presidential elections, electoral authorities did not provide detailed vote counts.
But the opposition coalition collected tally sheets from 80% of the nation’s electronic voting machines and posted them online. González and opposition leader María Corina Machado said the voting records showed the former diplomat won the election with twice as many votes as Maduro.
Earlier this month, Maduro appeared to extend an olive branch to Donald Trump, calling for a new era of “win-win” relations and prompting speculation of possible rapprochement between the two leaders.’
“In his first government … Trump wasn’t good to us [but] this is a new start,” said Maduro during a live TV broadcast.
Addressing Trump, Maduro said: “Your slogan is ‘Make America Great Again’. And, paraphrasing your slogan, I’d say that our slogan is to make the united Venezuela, Latin America and the Caribbean great.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who has friendly relations with Maduro, reversed his support for the July elections, calling them a “mistake”.
Petro spoke in an interview with Brazilian news outlet Globo News, which released excerpts online that Petro’s office shared Tuesday on social media.
Petro told the news outlet on Monday while visiting Brazil for the G20 summit that he initially had been in favor of Venezuela holding the elections, but that he later decided that the vote was not “free”.
“I think the elections were a mistake,” Petro said.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press
