On Friday, August 16, the Organization of American States, OAS, passed a resolution to request that the Venezuelan CNE publish the electoral tallies from the July 28 presidential election. The resolution, approved unanimously, requests that the vote tallies of each polling station be presented.
The resolution was proposed by the United States, which, despite affirming in the OAS resolution that “the fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification,” released a statement on August 1 recognizing the victory of the right-wing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. This statement was released before the evidence of the alleged electoral fraud was presented and before the CNE published the requested minutes.
Given this resolution, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), demanded in a statement that the OAS should not undermine the national sovereignty of Venezuela. They highlighted that since 2019 the Caribbean country has not been part of the OAS, so its resolutions have no direct effect on Venezuelan political institutions. “[ALBA-TCP] demands respect for the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people and the sovereign performance of its institutions and calls on the OAS to address its affairs and the social, economic, and governance crises suffered by several of its member states, especially in the United States of America,” concludes the communiqué.
A number of Venezuelan social movements that are part of ALBA Movements, a platform of social and political organizations from across Latin America and the Caribbean, also released a statement in response to the attempts by different governments and media outlets to meddle in Venezuelan politics. Their communiqué highlighted that the pretensions of several countries to repeat or deny the July 28 presidential elections cannot be admissible for a sovereign nation like Venezuela. It also stated that the petition of the OAS makes no sense, since the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) itself, at the request of the President of the Republic, requested that the elections be audited to know if there were any irregularities.
Likewise, the communiqué outlines the strategy of the Venezuelan right-wing opposition which consists of carrying out violent protests in the streets of the country and undertaking a diplomatic and media campaign to condemn and isolate the PSUV government and exalt the supposed victory of Gonzalez Urrutia. For this reason, they declared that they strongly reject the interference of the United States, they question the attitude of the governments of Brazil and Colombia, and they call on the right wing to accept the electoral defeat.
Finally, the Venezuelan movements ask “The peoples of the world… to make an effort to understand our political process beyond the media cancellation. You have been taught to demonize the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo, and you have bitten the apple. Detox yourselves and look at us for what we are, not for what you are told by the private transnational corporations that manage common sense, that…belong to Trump, Buffet, Murdoch, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos; they decide how they see us and you buy it, sometimes without bad intentions.”
New mobilizations in Venezuela
The day following the OAS vote saw both the right-wing opposition and chavismo take to the streets to attempt to showcase the popular support behind their positions; the right-wing on the one hand claiming that fraud took place and González won; and chavismo on the other hand, affirming that Venezuelan institutions are the legitimate bodies to deal with internal disputes and that Maduro won on July 28.
The right-wing opposition leader, María Corina Machado, called for several mobilizations inside and outside Venezuela on August 17 in an attempt to put pressure on Maduro’s government and on foreign governments to in turn put pressure on Venezuela’s elected government. However, Machado’s attempt to rally up popular support seems to have not succeeded within Venezuela as images from their “Great World Protest For The Truth” did not show more than a couple thousand people. Hundreds mobilized in cities such as Miami, Madrid, Tel Aviv, New York City, and others as part of the right-wing’s day of action, calling for foreign intervention in Venezuela.
For its part, Chavismo also called for a massive mobilization seeking to support the election of Nicolás Maduro as President of Venezuela. The call of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) published in several media stated that “We have organized at least 100 cities and we are going to be in the 100 national marches where the states, the capitals, the municipalities, [thanks to] all that strength that the revolution has, are going to demonstrate with joy”.
