Members of the Spanish left-wing government are split on how to respond to last week’s Venezuelan elections, in which Nicolás Maduro’s government has been accused by most of the Western world of widespread fraud. Spanish right-wingers VOX, whose observer was interrogated in Venezuela before being deported, has accused the Socialist Spanish government of cozying up to the Maduro regime.
The Venezuelan presidential election, held on July 28th, was won officially by President Nicolás Maduro with 52% of the vote, while the main opposition candidate Edmundo González got 43%. However, the government has still not made public the voting tallies to prove Maduro won, and the opposition claims the elections were stolen. They declared González the winner by a landslide of 67%.
Despite international criticism of the Venezuelan government, Spanish Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz, a member of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s hard-left junior coalition partner Sumar, called for the recognition of the Venezuelan results, saying: “The first thing is to recognise the election results, which is what democrats all over the world do, and secondly, simply: in the face of doubts, transparency, transparency, and transparency.”
Another left-wing party, Podemos—which split from Sumar last December, but still lends its support to the Sánchez government in parliament—also expressed its support for Nicolás Maduro, saying “the people have spoken and their will must be respected.”
Not everyone on the Left agrees with these statements. Another leading politician within Sumar, Health Minister Mónica García, has called for full transparency in Venezuela. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also called on the Caracas government to provide a detailed breakdown of votes cast to prove Maduro won.
The Spanish government is outspoken and ferocious when attacking the conservative governments of Israel or Hungary. In contrast, the response has been lukewarm with regards to Venezuela. PM Sánchez appealed for “calm, civic-mindedness and respect for the fundamental rights of all Venezuelans.”
Former Socialist Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was invited to observe the elections in Venezuela, which was denounced by opposition party VOX. The party decried the detention of Maduro’s political opponents, and called on Sánchez to issue a harsher response “to condemn the electoral fraud carried out by the dictatorial regime,” and the actions of Zapatero “in supporting a regime that violates human rights and commits crimes against humanity.”
While Zapatero was feted by the regime in Venezuela, one of VOX’s own politicians, Victor González was given a less than warm welcome. González was invited to be an election observer by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. As he told the newspaper El Debate, he arrived in Caracas two days before the election, and had a meeting at his hotel with young people who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Maduro regime.
González’s ordeal began the next day: he was confronted by police in his hotel’s lobby, his passport was confiscated, and he was told to pack his bags. They took him to the airport where he was locked in a cell for seven hours. He was forced to strip naked, and was interrogated by members of the domestic intelligence services who verbally abused him, and demanded that he collaborate. In the end, they returned his passport, his mobile phone—which they had hacked into—and put him on a flight back to Madrid.
Tensions are still rising in the South American country. There have been ongoing protests against the socialist regime ever since polling day. Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was disqualified from running in the election, last week called for a peaceful transition of power. The largest protests against the president are concentrated in the capital Carácas but protests are taking place in areas throughout the country.
Security forces have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. The government has also sent paramilitary groups to disperse the demonstrators with gunfire. Human rights groups say at least 22 people have been killed, and more than 2,000 detained. At a rally in Caracas on Saturday, Maduro pledged to detain more people and send them to prison. Both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado have gone into hiding.
“We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Many governments in both North and South America expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the result.
The European Union refused to recognise Maduro’s victory, and has called for an independent count of the votes. “Copies of the electoral voting records published by the opposition, and reviewed by several independent organisations, indicate that Edmundo González Urrutia would appear to be the winner of the presidential elections by a significant majority,” the EU statement said.
Sixty-one-year-old Maduro has slammed the international criticism, describing allegations of vote fraud as a “trap” orchestrated by Washington to justify “a coup.”
As Venezuelan writer and analyst Alejandro Peña Esclusa told The European Conservative in an interview:
The fundamental problem is that Maduro and his clique cannot give up power. They have committed so many crimes that they know that the moment they leave power they are finished. That is why they had no qualms about committing such a blatant and obvious fraud, especially in the absence of international observers.