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The United States has recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González as the winner of the country’s recent presidential election, going against claims from long-time Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro that he won re-election.
“Electoral data overwhelmingly demonstrate the will of the Venezuelan people,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a statement on Thursday. “Venezuelans have voted, and their votes must count.”
“In the days since the election, we have consulted widely with partners and allies around the world, and while countries have taken different approaches in responding, none have concluded that Nicolás Maduro received the most votes this election,” according to a statement from the State Department.
The agency said Maduro’s claims to have won 51 percent of the vote lack “any credibility” because the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council refuses to release in-depth local election data, as the opposition has.
Fellow regional powers have called for transparency.
“The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty should be respected based on the impartial verification of the results,” the governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico wrote in a joint comminque on Thursday.
Maduro, the political successor to Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo Chavez, has remained insistent that he won.
He has accused the other side of trying to launch a “counter-revolution” and labeled González and the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado as “perverse and macabre” terrorists.
His security forces have killed at least 17 people, and arrested more than 750, in protests that followed the election on Sunday, according to The New York Times.
“I am writing this from hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom, and that of my fellow countrymen from the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro,” opposition leader Corina Machado, who won a presidential primary but was barred from running against Maduro, wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
“We Venezuelans have done our duty,” she added. “We have voted out Mr. Maduro. Now it is up to the international community to decide whether to tolerate a demonstrably illegitimate government.”
Maduro wrote on Thursday in Spanish on X that, If the government of the United States is disposed to respect sovereignty and stop threatening Venezuela, we will be able to restart dialogue.”
