Blinken says US has serious concerns on Venezuela vote results

The U.S. has “serious concerns” about the results of the election in Venezuela, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Daniel Flatley | Bloomberg News (TNS)

The U.S. has “serious concerns” about the results of the election in Venezuela, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, calling for a detailed tabulation of votes after Nicolás Maduro was reelected as the nation’s president for six more years.

“Now that the voting has concluded, it is vitally important that every vote is counted fairly and transparently,” Blinken said in a statement Monday during a visit to Japan for discussions.

“We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” he later said in comments to reporters.

Maduro won Sunday’s election with 51.2% of the vote, compared with 44.2% for rival Edmundo González, the electoral center said. An exit poll conducted by U.S. firm Edison Research instead had González winning by more than 30 percentage points, lending to suspicions that Maduro’s administration had tampered with the tally.

“The United States applauds the Venezuelan people for their participation in the July 28 presidential election despite significant challenges and deep concerns about the process,” Blinken said in the statement. “Now that the voting has concluded, it is vitally important that every vote is counted fairly and transparently.”

Blinken said the world was watching the vote closely. Accusations of troubles at the ballot box that include suspected fraud have marred the country’s elections for years.

The international community has criticized Maduro for barring many opposition candidates from running in the vote, including former lawmaker and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. A clean election is a condition for the U.S. to remove sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry.

Maduro will face the challenge of legitimizing the vote to his people and the rest of the world, given his government’s history of repression and fraudulent elections. González was running in the place of Machado, who experienced a meteoric rise in popularity even after the government banned her from seeking public office.

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