The U.S. government on Thursday recognized Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of the South American country’s presidential election, discrediting the results announced by electoral authorities who declared President Nicolás Maduro the victor.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the election, but the president’s main challenger, González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have said that they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed.
They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.
The announcement from the U.S. government came amid diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro to release vote tallies from the election and increasing calls for an independent review of the results, according to officials from Brazil and México.
Pressure to show vote tally sheets
Government officials from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have been in constant communication with Maduro’s administration to convince him that he must show the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election and allow impartial verification, a Brazilian government official told The Associated Press Thursday.
The officials have told Venezuela’s government that showing the data is the only way to dispel any doubt in the results, said the Brazilian official, who asked not be identified because they are not authorized to publicly speak about the diplomatic efforts.
A Mexican official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, confirmed that the three governments have been discussing the issue with Venezuela but did not provide details.
Earlier, Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he planned to speak with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, and that his government believes it’s important that the electoral tallies be made public.
Later Thursday, the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela’s electoral authorities “to move forward expeditiously and publicly release” detailed voting data, but they did not confirm any backroom diplomatic efforts to persuade Maduro’s government to publish the vote tallies.
“The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification of the results,” they said in the statement.