They are at least 12 dead e 750 arrests, according to mid-day updates on Wednesday 31 July, due to violent repression implemented byVenezuelan army following the riots that broke out in the capital Caracas and throughout the country after the highly contested electoral victory of outgoing president Nicolas Maduro. Among the deceased, some NGOs report, there are also two minors, while the opposition party Voluntad Popular, which denounces irregularities in the vote and claims to have won with double the consensus of Maduro, informs that one of its managers, Freddy Superlano, has been picked up by the police and is being held in prison. The situation in the Caribbean country is therefore worsening, col re-elected Maduro confirming that he has won with 51,2% of the votes e accusation the opponents Corina Machado, leader of VP, and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, defeated presidential candidate, of being responsible for "acts of vandalism throughout the country", announcing that justice will be done. The president, in office since 2013 and now until 2031, has even spoken of a "coup attempt" against him, to justify the harsh repression.
Lula's ambiguous position
In this climate of civil war, the international community makes its concern felt, starting with the Latin American community. If in fact the United States andEuropean Union they condemn the violence but for now limit themselves to asking for transparency, questioning the regularity of Maduro's victory. The confrontation between Venezuela's neighboring countries is even more bitter. The position of the Brazilian president is particularly ambiguous Squid, which he engaged directly with Joe Biden to keep attention high on what is happening to Caracas and to guarantee a peaceful solution, but which at the same time did not deny the re-election of his colleague Maduro, indeed speaking publicly about a situation "which has nothing serious or anomalous", while asking to have access to electoral documents. Words that were deemed "worrying" by the former Venezuelan ambassador to Brasilia Milos Alcalay, and which are probably due to the desire not to go into head-on confrontation with the Chavista leader (who belongs to the same socialist political family as Lula), especially after There had already been skirmishes between the two on the eve of the elections.
Maduro increasingly isolated in South America
The reactions of the other countries in the area were decidedly harsher, with some of which Maduro in fact cut diplomatic relations by sending away the ambassadors: apart from Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua, the South America si compact ranks against the Chavista leader. The Chilean president Gabriel Boric and the Colombian president Gustavo Petro also converge on Lula's skeptical but prudent position, as well as the newly elected Mexican Claudia Sheinbaum, while even they disavow officially the outcome electoral Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and especially Perù, which actually recognizes the challenger Gonzalez Urrutia like legitimate vincitore. It is useless to underline that instead on the other side of the geopolitical axis, i.e. countries such as Russia, China, Iran, Belarus e Turkey, Maduro even received them hot congratulations. Tensions with the rest of the world can be significant in various respects: first of all, for the oil market, given that already in April Washington tightened the embargo against Venezuela again and could now take further measures. And then for the economic and social repercussions throughout South America, where there is now fear of a new wave of migration from Venezuela towards neighboring countries, primarily Colombia and Brazil, which have in fact closed their borders.
Carter Center: “Undemocratic and suspicious elections in Venezuela”
Meanwhile, the independent electoral observatory Carter Center, quoted by the South American press, established that the electoral process in Venezuela “cannot be considered democratic”. The institution sent 17 inspectors, duly welcomed by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (a Chavista majority body), who found that, first of all, the disaggregated results were not provided, i.e. region by region and city by city, as required by the regulation , limiting itself instead to providing something far-fetched overall result which sees Maduro prevail with 51,2% and Gonzalez Urrutia stuck at 44,2%. In reality, the opposition claims to have received many more votes, and the Carter Center estimates that only 80% of the ballots were actually counted. Finally, it was pretty much denied the right to vote ai 7,7 million Venezuelan citizens residing abroad, practically a quarter of the population forced to emigrate in recent years due to poverty: only 70 thousand of them were registered in the electoral registers.
