WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The United States says there is overwhelming evidence that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia has won Venezuela's presidential election.
The state-controlled National Electoral Council's announcement declaring incumbent president Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election was deeply flawed, and does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
'The CNE's rapid declaration of Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence. The CNE still has not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets, despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community to do so. As the independent Carter Center's observation mission reported, the CNE's failure to provide the precinct-level official results, as well as irregularities throughout the process, have stripped the CNE's announced outcome of any credibility,' the statement says.
The opposition Democratic Unitary Platform has published more than 80 percent of the tally sheets received from polling stations throughout Venezuela, indicating that its candidate won the most votes in the election by a big margin. Independent observers have corroborated these facts, and this outcome was also supported by Election Day exit polls and quick counts.
Blinken said the United States rejects Maduro's unsubstantiated allegations against opposition leaders. Maduro and his representatives' threats to arrest opposition leaders, including Urrutia and Opposition leader María Corina Machado, are an undemocratic attempt to repress political participation and retain power, according to him.
Meanwhile, G7 Foreign Ministers urged Venezuela's election authorities to publish the detailed electoral results in full transparency and to immediately share all information with the opposition and independent observers.
'Independent domestic and international observers' reports have raised serious concerns about the announced results of Venezuela's Presidential elections and about the way the electoral process was conducted, especially regarding the irregularities and lack of transparency in the final tabulation of the votes,' says a statement issued by the Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and the High Representative of the European Union.
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