Venezuela opposition supporters attend a protest on Aug. 3, in Caracas, Venezuela. President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro was declared as the winner of the 2024 presidential election over his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez. According to the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the result does not reflect the decision made by the Venezuelans during the election.Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
There have been few more blatant examples of election theft than the one Nicolás Maduro and his United Socialist Party thugs are attempting in Venezuela – the more so for their efforts to pass off the whole thing as democracy as usual.
Usually dictators don’t bother holding a vote, or do so only under closely controlled conditions. But the Maduro regime was under pressure: it had agreed to hold free and fair elections last year in return for the lifting of U.S.-led sanctions on its oil exports. The sanctions had been reimposed early this year, after the main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, was prevented from running.
Still, it appears people were allowed to vote freely enough in the July 28 election. The votes were even counted with some degree of regularity. The regime just lied about the result.
So where exit polls had Edmundo González, Ms. Machado’s replacement as the candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform, with 65 per cent of the vote, the official results had Mr. Maduro ahead by the narrowest of margins, with precisely 51.2 per cent of the vote.
That would have been dubious enough. But the opposition, with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers, was able to collect copies of the voting tally sheets from 83 per cent of the polling stations around the country – those the regime was not quick enough to block the opposition from entering. They show Mr. González with 67 per cent of the vote, to Mr. Maduro’s 30 per cent.
There isn’t any question what happened here. The tally sheets have been posted online, and verified by independent observers. The results are not “disputed,” or “in doubt.” Mr. González won and Mr. Maduro lost. Only instead of conceding defeat, Mr. Maduro has dug in deeper, even in the face of massive street protests demanding his resignation. Thousands have been arrested. Dozens have been killed.
It is at moments like these, when democracy and dictatorship hang in the balance, that a strong and united response from the international community can make the difference. Sure enough, a number of countries in the region issued statements in the days after the election, unambiguously declaring Mr. González the winner. These include Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Uruguay.
So, too, did the United States. “Given the overwhelming evidence,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement last Thursday, “it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people, that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.”
And Canada? The day after the election, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told a news conference Canada had “serious concerns” about it. Two days later, the G7 foreign ministers, Canada’s among them, called on “relevant representatives to publish the detailed electoral results in full transparency.”
By the end of the week, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had found the time to issue her own statement, again requesting that the Maduro government “publish detailed results for all polling stations” and calling for “a peaceful, negotiated and Venezuelan-led solution” to the crisis. But as for recognizing the election’s clear and rightful winner: not a word.
This reticence has not gone unnoticed. “Canada cautiously waded into the Venezuelan election dispute,” Bloomberg reported after Ms. Joly’s statement, contrasting it with “the more direct approach of President Joe Biden’s administration.” Protesters rallied in downtown Toronto over the weekend, CP reported, “to demand a stronger response from Ottawa.”
It’s a puzzle why the Trudeau government should have chosen to be so timid at this time. This is the same government, after all, that had been among the Lima Group of nations demanding Mr. Maduro step down after his previous attempt to rig an election, in 2019.
To be sure, there had been a grudging rapprochement since then. But with Mr. Maduro having so spectacularly reneged on his promise of free and fair elections, surely now was the time for Canada to close ranks with our democratic partners in calling him out for it.
But then, it’s never clear where this government’s head is on foreign relations at any given time. From its early efforts to cozy up to China, to its clumsy attempt to straddle the Israel-Gaza divide, to the botched “pivot to India,” to the farcical posturing at last month’s NATO summit, it seems always to be tacking this way and that, always trying to split the difference: the honest broker nobody asked for, avoiding choices while it evades responsibilities, alienating our allies even as it earns the hearty contempt of our foes.
Still, you’d have thought even this government, presented with such a clear choice between democracy and dictatorship, would have known which side to come down on. You’d have thought wrong.