EU urges Caracas to postpone December election

The EU is urging Venezuela's government to postpone National Assembly elections to give more time to establish free and fair conditions.

"Conditions are not met, at this stage, for a transparent, inclusive, free and fair electoral process," EU high representative and vice-president Josep Borrell said in a statement today. "In my contacts, I suggested the possibility to extend the electoral deadlines to meet the request made by the opposition."

He said Venezuela's foreign ministry responded that an agreement to delay the elections had been reached "with a sector of the opposition" which alludes to fringe political parties outside the mainstream opposition that have been more accommodating to President Nicolas Maduro.

Borrell called the foreign ministry response "a step in the right direction, but not enough" for the EU to deploy election observers.

Venezuela's US-backed opposition declared early this month that it would boycott the election because minimum conditions to participate have not been met. In recent weeks, Maduro's forces have stepped up persecution of opposition political parties and figures.

Maduro's government planned the election for 6 December, paving the way for an assembly overhaul that would undermine the constitutional standing of opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Guaido declared an interim presidency in January 2019, based on his assembly speakership, to replace Maduro who is widely deemed to have been fraudulently reelected in May 2018.

Since then, Guaido has led an unsuccessful campaign, backed by US oil and financial sanctions, to force Maduro out.

Rigid endorsement

The mainstream opposition parties and the US have said they will maintain recognition of Guaido's claim to the presidency no matter the outcome of the December election. Washington says it expects other countries recognizing Guaido to follow its lead.

While the EU, like the US and Canada, recognizes Guaido as interim president, Brussels has pressed to engage with Caracas and has declined to adopt more than targeted sanctions on individual Venezuelan officials, in contrast to the more confrontational stance of the US administration.

Brussels leads the International Contact Group on Venezuela that Argentina joined this week. Besides the EU, other members are Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the UK and Uruguay.

The hawkish counterweight to the ICG is the Lima Group, comprised of Canada and a handful of Latin American countries, including Brazil, Peru and Colombia. But the Lima group has been muted in 2020, as Argentina and other countries have shifted into the EU camp.

Spain's Repsol and Italy's Eni maintain oil ties with Venezuela's state-owned PdV, with upstream production as well as diesel and debt swaps for crude that are tolerated by the US as an exception to the sanctions.

In a separate statement today, Venezuela's influential Episcopal Council rejected the Guaido-led opposition's election boycott. "Despite the irregularities, massive popular participation (in elections) is necessary to overcome the government's totalitarian efforts and advantage," the Catholic church group said.

By Patricia Garip