The Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, joined this Friday in the recognition of the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the legitimate president-elect of Venezuela, after the National Electoral Center (CNE) of the South American nation gave Nicolás Maduro as the winner in an election last Sunday that Panama considers “fraudulent.”
“Panama joins the recognition of Edmundo González Urrutia as elected president of Venezuela. That respect for the popular will prevails as the basis of democracy,” Mulino said in his account of X.
The Panamanian president had already clearly positioned himself against the result announced by the CNE after Sunday’s elections, an electoral body that this same Friday ratified that Maduro was re-elected in the presidential elections with 51.95% of the votes, compared to 43.18% of the majority opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, with 96.87% of the minutes counted.
González Urrutia and opposition leader María Corina Machado nevertheless made public 81% of the voting minutes that give the opposition candidate as the winner with 67% of the votes, compared to 30% obtained by Maduro.
These accusations of electoral fraud have led several countries to the recognition of González Urrutia as the winner of the elections, becoming the president-elect of Panama.
To the recognition on Thursday by the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, that González Urrutia was the winner “of the majority of votes in the presidential elections,” are added the recognitions of Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador or Costa Rica.
The Government of Panama, chaired by Mulino, has been a strong critic of the Venezuelan elections, demanding transparency even before it is held. After the results, not only did they declare them “fraudulent,” but also put the relations on “suspension” and withdrew the diplomatic corps from the South American country. Currently, the airspace between the two countries is closed.
Then he had no qualms about describing as “depressing” that the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) did not reach the necessary consensus on Wednesday to approve a resolution that asked the Venezuelan authorities to publish “immediately” the minutes of last Sunday’s elections with “absurd and stupid arguments.”
Given the lack of consensus in the OAS, “the only thing left for the countries is, individually, to continue expressing our rejection and cooperating collectively in any multilateral action that tends to restore democracy in Venezuela as soon as possible,” Mulino said on Thursday.
The OAS was discussing the approval of a resolution that asked the Venezuelan authorities to publish “immediately” the minutes of last Sunday’s elections, since the National Electoral Center (CNE) of Venezuela has not shown the totalization minutes, something that has been demanded by both the opposition and the citizenry in massive protests and part of the international community.