The harsh stance of Chilean President Gabriel Boric on the electoral crisis in Venezuela, a country he has described as a “dictatorship”, has opened a schism in the progressive coalition with which he governs and has distanced him from his main South American colleagues in Brazil and Colombia.
On Thursday, after the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) of Venezuela to validate the controversial result of the elections held on July 28, which gave victory to Nicolás Maduro with 51.9% of the votes compared to 43.2% for the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, Boric indicated that the highest court was finishing “consolidating the fraud.”
“Chile does not recognize this false self-proclaimed victory of Maduro and company. Today the Venezuelan Supreme Court has finished consolidating the fraud. The Maduro regime obviously welcomes with enthusiasm its sentence that will be marked by infamy,” he stressed on his X account.
On Sunday, the Communist Party of Chile, one of the parties that support the heterogeneous government coalition, responded with a statement in which it stressed its commitment to “the respect and sovereignty of the people,” highlighted the “civic and peaceful climate” in which the elections took place, and reiterated the need for “a peaceful solution to the crisis to prevail.”
In the note, issued after an extraordinary meeting of its Political Commission, the PC recalled that “Venezuela has been subject to unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies, denounced and rejected by the United Nations” for violating international law and devastatingly impacting the internal situation of the country,” including “the mass exodus of Venezuelans.”
Insistence
The party also urged the international community to “refrain from adopting positions that could foster a climate of confrontation in Venezuela,” while calling on the Venezuelan authorities to publish “the breakdown of the minutes of the electoral process.”
The statement by the PC, which refused to call Maduro a dictator, also sparked criticism from members of the Socialist Party (PS), also in the coalition, such as Senator Juan Luis Castro.
“They believe that they have to show the minutes, when everything has already been closed and Chile has said that fraud was committed. It leaves the communist ministers of the Government in an uncomfortable position: having to decide whether they are loyal to the president or continue to maintain an umbilical cord and loyalty to Venezuela,” he said.
In this context of tension, the government spokesperson and prominent member of the PC, Camila Vallejo, admitted on Monday the differences but denied that there is a crisis in the coalition.
“For the president, this issue is one of the differences that we have had for a long time and will probably continue to have. I think it is important to highlight that in the face of the electoral process that Venezuela experienced, everyone, including the Communist Party, has insisted that the result cannot be 100% validated if all the records are not delivered,” he stressed.
In her statements on local radio station Duna, Vallejo aligned herself with the president and said that, as a minister of state, “there is no room for personal or militant interpretations.”
Position
Boric is, to date, the only progressive leader in Latin America who, like the centre and right-wing governments in the region, has openly denounced electoral fraud in Venezuela.
Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro insist that the way to resolve the crisis must begin with the presentation of the voting records.
“Both presidents remain convinced that the credibility of the electoral process can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data,” the leaders, who are acting as mediators, said in a joint statement released on Saturday, in which they also criticized the sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
Santiago / EFE
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2024-08-28 23:20:07
