U.S. Recognizes Opposition Head as President-Elect of Venezuela, Echoing Juan Guaido Saga

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Thursday that the United States recognizes Edmundo González as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election, which socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and the regime-controlled electoral authorities claim Maduro “won.”

“Given the overwhelming evidence, 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,” Blinken said in a press statement.

Venezuela held a highly controversial sham presidential election on Sunday, July 28. The ruling socialists spent an extensive amount of effort to ensure that the election was nowhere near free or fair. It took place after years of failed attempts by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary Blinken to convince Maduro to hold a “free a fair” election to legitimize himself.

The Biden administration granted multiple major financial concessions to Maduro as incentive to host a real election, among them a six-month oil and gas sanction relief package that granted the ruling socialists a windfall through U.S. and international oil sales. Biden also released Maduro’s top money launderer, Alex Saab, from prison in 2023 and two of his nephews, convicted of attempting to smuggle cocaine into New York, in 2022.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Center (CNE), claims that Maduro “won” Sunday’s sham election after allegedly obtaining 51 percent of the votes. Maduro’s “victory” was expectedly “certified” by the CNE on Monday. The CNE has not released any kind of finalized results or tallies that can corroborate the claimed results at press time.

The Venezuelan opposition has strongly contested the results, claiming that it was able to obtain documented vote tallies nationwide showing González achieving a landslide victory. The opposition published the results of allegedly obtained tallies online. They are the only publicly available data on the election. Maduro has promised that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela will soon present tallies that can prove his “victory” in the sham election but has failed to do so.

“The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás 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,” Blinken observed in his statement.

“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,” he continued.

The situation has led to nationwide protests met with the brutal repression by the socialist regime, leading to roughly a dozen dead and the detention of more than 1,200 protesters.

The Maduro regime rejected Blinken’s “grave and even more ridiculous” statement via its Foreign Ministry on Friday morning, insisting that Venezuelan “democracy” is “one of the most robust in the world.”

The Venezuelan socialists accused Blinken of pretending to “assume the role of the Venezuelan Electoral Power, demonstrating that the Government of the United States is at the forefront of the coup d’état that is intended against Venezuela, promoting a violent agenda against the Venezuelan people and its institutions.”

The Maduro regime also accused the United States of trying to create a “false narrative” through the use of the “great powers of global communication” and social media to allegedly “cause terror in the civilian population and have attacked sensitive points of the communities, under the fiction that they want to impose, against the majority will of the Venezuelan people.”

Foreign Ministry announced:

The United States Government has tried unsuccessfully, for 25 years, to overthrow the Bolivarian Government, they have not been able to, nor will they be able to, all their attempts will succumb to the resolution of a people, who with dignity, fight day by day, building a path towards progress, defeating aggressions and criminal sanctions.

“The Venezuelan people spoke, exercised their right and reiterated their non-renounceable path of sovereignty, peace and the construction of socialism to guarantee the greatest amount of happiness,” the statement continued.

The United States’s recognition of González as the winner of Sunday’s sham election — and Maduro’s fraudulent victory — recalls the events that took place in 2019 following Maduro’s similarly fraudulent 2018 sham presidential election.

The United States, and much of the free world, did not recognize Maduro’s 2018 fraudulent election as legitimate. Following the end of Maduro’s first term in January 2019, the National Assembly, at the time controlled by the Venezuelan opposition, designated Juan Guaidó the interim president of the country due to the “rupture in the democratic order” that Maduro’s fraudulent “reelection” and refusal to step down from power had caused. The National Assembly has the power to do this via the Venezuelan Constitution, making Guaidó the legitimate president of the country despite not participating in the sham election.

Guaidó’s presidency received the support of some 50 countries, including the United States. The interim presidency promised Venezuelans that it would work towards ending Maduro’s usurpation of power, the establishment of a transitional government, and the holding of free elections in Venezuela.

The interim presidency failed to achieve any of its goals and was ultimately dissolved in December 2022. Guaidó was deported to Miami by Colombian authorities in 2023 after he attempted to hold meetings with international representatives attending a conference on Venezuela organized by far-left President of Colombia Gustavo Petro.

Similarly to the United States, the governments of Argentina and Peru recently announced that they recognize González as the winner of the election.

WATCH: Billboard of Maduro Set Ablaze amid Venezuelan Election Protests

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.