UN says it is willing to mediate in Venezuela crisis if there is agreement and request from all parties

• The only role the organization has played in the Venezuelan elections was sending a panel of experts who questioned the transparency of the process.

The UN is ready to mediate in the Venezuelan crisis “provided that all parties agree and request it,” said the spokesman for the UN General Secretariat, Stéphane Dujarric, on Thursday, August 22.

At his daily press conference, Dujarric was asked about the possibility that the UN is participating in a more or less discreet way in some of the mediation initiatives taking place between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the supporters of Edmundo González, given that both claim victory in the presidential elections of last July 28.

“Our good offices are always available,” Dujarric replied, but added that they would only be carried out with the agreement of all parties.

Until now, the only role of the UN in the disputed Venezuelan elections consisted of sending a panel of electoral experts, invited by the government and who at the end of their mission declared themselves very critical with the development of the presidential elections.

A questionable election

The panel of experts’ interim report concluded that the Venezuelan presidential election lacked “basic measures of transparency and integrity that are essential to holding credible elections.”

A day later, Maduro’s government called the members of the UN group “false electoral experts” and accused them of spreading “a series of lies,” while the opposition said their document reinforces the thesis that supports the victory of opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

Venezuelan authorities have discredited both the UN panel’s report and the Carter Center’s allegations, despite both having been invited to observe the elections by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

Various countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are carrying out, with little results so far, a series of efforts to find a way out of the crisis through dialogue between the government and the opposition.

The TSJ validated the result issued by the CNE

On August 22, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ruled on the electoral contentious appeal regarding the presidential elections and declared that the Electoral Chamber determined that, after reviewing the minutes, they coincide with the information obtained from the electoral machines and support the victory of Nicolás Maduro.

Photo: EFE

“The electoral material examined is certified in an unobjectionable manner and this chamber validates the election results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) that declared Nicolás Maduro as the re-elected president,” said the president of the TSJ and the Electoral Chamber, Caryslia Beatriz Rodríguez Rodríguez.

Before the measure was known, the United Nations (UN) Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela alerted on the “lack of independence and impartiality” of both the TSJ and the CNE.

For his part, the standard-bearer of the largest opposition coalition in Venezuela, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González, rejection the ruling of the TSJ, and recalled that sovereignty resides non-transferably in the people.

With information from EFE

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