China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia congratulated Maduro.
The governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay demanded on Monday the “complete review of the results” of the election in Venezuela.
“Our governments will request an urgent meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) to issue a resolution that safeguards the popular will,” they added, after the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, controlled by Chavismo, declared the presidential winner of the presidential elections, in the midst of allegations of fraud.
“The vote count must be transparent and the results should not cast doubt,” the text says.
The official CNE announced in the early morning of Monday that Maduro had obtained 5.15 million votes (51.2%), compared to 4.45 million (44.2%) of the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia congratulated Maduro, while the result was criticized by the European Union, which called for “total transparency” in the counting of votes and the United States, which expressed its “serious concern.”
The resolution prepared by the foreign ministries will be “framed in the Democratic Charter and the fundamental principles of democracy in our region,” the statement added.
The OAS Democratic Charter is a mechanism that is used to define cases of alteration or breakdown of the democratic and constitutional thread in a member state.
It was invoked in 2016 by Secretary General Luis Almagro to refer to the crisis in Venezuela. Maduro’s government then accused the multilateral organization of “exercise” and of being a “space of imperial domination” and asked to leave the OAS in 2017, which was formalized two years later.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo