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China congratulated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday after he claimed victory in an election contested by the opposition and other South American nations, which allege fraud.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said “the results that have been released by Venezuelan electoral authorities to date do not reflect the will or the votes of the people”.
The National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) announced on Monday morning that after counting more than 80 per cent of the votes, Maduro received 51.2 per cent, while the main opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, secured 44.2 per cent.
The trend towards victory for Maduro, seeking a third term in office, was therefore “irreversible,” said Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE and a Maduro ally.
China was one of the first countries to laud Maduro.
“China congratulates Venezuela on the smooth presidential election and congratulates President Nicolas Maduro on his successful re-election. China and Venezuela are good friends and partners who support each other,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday.
“China attaches great importance to its relations with Venezuela and stands ready to work with the Venezuelan side to enrich the all-weather strategic partnership between the two countries and deliver more benefits for the two peoples.”
Russia, Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua also congratulated Maduro on his victory.
Mexico said it intended to “recognise the government elected by the people of Venezuela”.
No country in South America has yet acknowledged the result. Brazil’s foreign ministry said it would wait for polling station data to be published before making a statement.
Chile and Argentina have accused Caracas of rigging the results, while Colombia called for “a total vote count, its verification and an independent audit”.
Gonzalez – a former Venezuelan ambassador anointed as a unity candidate after the CNE barred favourite María Corina Machado from running – and his team have denounced several electoral irregularities. Opposition members said their witnesses were denied access to the CNE headquarters during the count.
They also accused election officials of cutting off data from polling stations to prevent votes from being processed and of refusing to publish individual polling stations’ results.
Throughout Sunday, several independent exit polls predicted an easy victory for Gonzalez, who was widely expected to end more than 25 years of “chavismo” rule in Venezuela. Edison Research, a US-based polling firm, predicted that the opposition leader would win with 65 per cent to Maduro’s 31 per cent.
Maduro had previously said that his victory was the only possible way if voters “don’t want Venezuela to plunge into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war”.
While casting doubt on the legitimacy of the announced results, Kirby said that the US had taken note of China’s recognition of Maduro and that Washington would continue to wait for the “full detailed tabulation of votes to be released”.
Soon after Kirby spoke, a senior State Department official said Washington was not ruling out imposing new sanctions on the Venezuelan regime and was holding talks with partners in the region such as Brazil and Colombia to decide on the next steps.
Evan Ellis, a research professor focusing on Latin America at the US Army War College, said China’s willingness to purchase the regime’s exports and loan to Caracas has contributed to the Maduro regime’s survival.
“China’s desire to avoid condemning its friends illustrates its desire to reap the benefit, while structurally it also benefits from the survival of those illegal regimes and the challenges they pose to the United States and the West,” Ellis said.
He added that several countries in Latin America have in recent years preferred to adopt “a stance of cognitive dissonance” concerning Chinese support for authoritarian regimes in the region, in favour of “lucrative economic opportunities that they hope to achieve with the PRC”.
Ellis said the transactional nature of Sino-Latin American relations means that Beijing’s stance on Maduro’s re-election “will not significantly impact the posture of the region towards China in general terms”.