Washington/Brasilia, Jul 30 (EFE).- The president of the United States, Joe Biden, and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke on Tuesday by telephone about the crisis in Venezuela following Sunday’s elections and They agreed that the Venezuelan electoral body should publish the voting records as soon as possible.
“The two leaders agreed on the need for Venezuelan electoral authorities to immediately release complete, transparent and detailed data on votes cast at polling stations,” the White House said in a statement.
The leaders also shared the view that the Venezuelan elections “represent a critical moment for democracy” on the continent and “committed to continue working closely on this issue.”
Biden thanked Lula “for his leadership in Venezuela,” given that the Brazilian leader has played an important mediating role between the government of President Nicolás Maduro and the anti-Chavez opposition in the months leading up to the elections.
According to the Brazilian government, during the half-hour conversation, Lula reiterated his country’s position of “continuing to work for the normalization of the political process” in Venezuela, and said that the publication of the minutes was “fundamental.”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) released its only bulletin early Monday morning, with only 80% of the votes counted, and awarded victory to Maduro with 51.2% of the votes, compared to 44.2% for opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, supported by opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is disqualified from running in the elections.
The opposition, for its part, claims to have obtained victory with more than 70% of the minutes of the process, and that the partial result is favorable to González Urrutia, who it said would obtain around 70% of the votes compared to 30% for the president and candidate for reelection.
Several countries have called for the publication of the results to verify the results and numerous protests have broken out in the country, where 750 people have been arrested, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, and at least 11 people have died, according to non-governmental organizations.
Beyond the Venezuelan crisis, the Brazilian president congratulated Biden for the “magnanimous” decision to withdraw from the November electoral contest in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, and wished “success for democracy” in the US in those elections.
Following the electoral debate between Biden and Donald Trump at the end of June, Lula had already expressed concern about the “vulnerability” of the Democratic candidate, but said that the decision to withdraw was only his.
The Brazilian also invited the American president to participate in a meeting of “democratic countries against extremism” to be held in September during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Biden, for his part, confirmed during the telephone conversation that he will participate in the G20 summit to be held in Rio de Janeiro in November and said that bilateral relations between the two countries must “continue to grow.”
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2024-08-02 00:48:00