The position of the European Union towards Venezuela is to maintain the demand that Maduro publish the results while “there is an ongoing negotiation” and “waiting” the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of the Caribbean country
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, criticized on Monday that Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, has gone to the Venezuelan Supreme Court to “defend” him after he proclaimed himself the winner without publishing the minutes of the presidential elections on which the international community has issued suspicions of fraud.
“The height of sarcasm,” he summed up
“Maduro has appealed to the Court, appealed to the courts to defend him, which is the height of sarcasm, and we are waiting for the Supreme Court of Venezuela to issue the sentence.”
Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy
In this sense, he said he did not know “what the Venezuelan judicial body is going to issue as a sentence” because “its function is not to count the electoral results.” This task, he recalled, is the responsibility of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela – controlled by the Chavista government – so, in his opinion, “Maduro does not need to go to court” and to publish the electoral records so that the international community can proceed with its “verification.”
In his opinion, the action of the Venezuelan president raises doubts because “he insists on saying that he has won and does not want to understand that, for the international community, without verification there is no assumption of results.” “Imagine that here in Spain the electoral authority published partial results and did not justify them, what would we think of?” he asked.
In this way, he said he hoped that the international community would maintain its “results verification” as the Venezuelan opposition led by Edmundo González and María Corina Machado has published results “rather than Maduro proclaims” by gathering “more than 80 percent of the minutes of the polling stations.”
Repression is accentuated
In this context, he has described the situation in Venezuela as “dramatic” and has been expectant “to see what happens in the coming days” because “the repression” of the Chavista government “is accentuated” and “there are already more than 2,000 people arrested.”
He also said that the European Union’s position on Venezuela is to maintain the demand that Maduro publish the results while “there is an ongoing negotiation” and “waiting” the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of the Caribbean country.
“Venezuela can go into a serious crisis, we are all trying to prevent this from happening,” Borrell said.
On the proposal of “some Latin American country” to repeat elections and share power between government and opposition, he said he does not know “how that is done” and insisted that “nothing will be done surely until the Supreme Court does not speak.”
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo