Biden says he supports rerun of Venezuelan presidential election, contradicting opposition leader

SAO PAULO (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Thursday rejected a proposal by Brazil’s president to hold new presidential elections in Venezuela after disputed results of last month’s vote.

Her comments came shortly after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he still did not recognize Nicolas Maduro as the winner of last month’s election. Venezuela presidential electionHe said his counterpart might call new elections “if he had common sense.” US President Joe Biden also expressed support for new elections.

Lula said Maduro still owes an explanation to Brazilians and the rest of the world.

Machado said during a virtual press conference with Argentine media that re-election would be an “insult” to the people, and asked if a second election was held and Maduro still did not accept the results, “Would we go to a third election?”

Brazil is the largest country in South America and shares one of the longest land borders with Venezuela. Unlike many other countries, Those who recognized either Maduro or Gonzalez As the winners, the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico took a more neutral stance by neither rejecting nor accepting it when Venezuela’s electoral authorities have declared Maduro the winner. In the ballot box.

“Maduro still has six months left in his term. He is the president regardless of the elections. If he has common sense, he could call on the Venezuelan people, maybe even call for new elections, create an electoral commission and allow observers from all over the world to monitor,” Lula said in an interview with Radio T.

In a joint statement, the three countries called on Venezuela’s electoral body to issue tens of thousands of ballot papers, which are the final proof of the results.

Under Lula, the country has played an important mediating role, including in the Barbados Agreement reached in October, when the Maduro administration and the political opposition reached an agreement on new elections, leading to an easing of U.S. sanctions.

In July, Celso Amorim, Lula’s closest international adviser and a former foreign minister, visited Caracas to monitor the elections. Speaking before a Senate committee on Thursday morning, Amorim said the new elections must be subject to strong and robust verification.

Venezuelan law allows for another vote to be held whenever the National Electoral Council or judicial authorities invalidate an election that was found to be fraudulent or whose result was impossible to determine. The new election must be held within six to twelve months under the same conditions as the vote was invalidated, and the same candidates must appear on the ballot.

Regardless of the logistics, laws and costs, holding new elections would be a A risky gamble for Maduro and his allies But at the same time, Venezuela is not in a position to dominate elections. The July elections and the protests that followed showed that they have lost support across the country and can no longer rely on a group of die-hard supporters, known as “Chavistas,” as well as civil servants and others whose businesses or jobs depend on the state to comfortably overwhelm opponents.

Although electoral authorities have declared Maduro the winner of the long-awaited election, they have yet to provide detailed vote tallies to support their claim. However, the opposition has revealed that it has not received any votes. The counting papers have been collected. Results from an examination of more than 80% of the 30,000 electronic voting machines across the country showed that Maduro lost by more than 2 to 1.

An Associated Press review of the released tally shows Gonzalez won far more votes than the government claimed, casting doubt on Maduro’s official claim of victory.

The Associated Press processed nearly 24,000 images representing the results of 79 percent of the voting machines, resulting in 10.26 million votes counted. The processed tallies showed Gonzalez had more votes than Maduro, with 20,476 votes cast.

Asked Thursday in Washington whether he would support new elections in Venezuela, Biden said, “Yes.” Biden did not elaborate, and the White House did not immediately provide further details about the president’s brief remarks.

Earlier on Thursday, the White House reiterated its call for Maduro’s government to release vote count data. White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby also said the United States believes Edmundo Gonzalez had the highest vote count.

“We believe that Mr. Gonzalez will get a majority of the vote,” Kirby said. “We believe that will happen through a number of ways, through a number of sources. But what’s really critical is the actual voting data. And the fact that Mr. Maduro won’t release that data, I think certainly speaks to what should be a concern for him… and the results of that will be presented in a transparent manner.”

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Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, Joshua Goodman in Miami, and AP White House correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.