Lula speaks for half an hour on phone with Biden about Venezuela’s electoral impasse | Politics

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke by phone for about half an hour with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, on Tuesday (30). The topic was the electoral impasse in Venezuela.

The conversation was scheduled at the request of the US government. Biden wanted to hear from Lula the Brazilian government’s position on the Venezuelan political crisis.

The Planalto Palace and the White House have not yet officially commented on what was discussed between the two presidents.

The presidential elections were held in Venezuela on Sunday (28).

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, the country’s government-linked electoral body, said incumbent President Nicolas Maduro had won with 51.2 percent of the vote. Opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez was in second place.

But the opposition claims the election was rigged and that Edmundo was the real winner. Maduro has been in power since 2013. Since then, he has won two elections, which the opposition and international organizations have accused of failing to respect transparency and democratic principles.

The failure to disclose the minutes was one of the main points of distrust regarding the election results. The minutes are bulletins recording the votes in each ballot box and were not properly submitted by the Venezuelan authorities.

Brazil has already asked Venezuela to provide the minutes of the meeting and is waiting, but so far nothing has been done.

This predicament affects Brazil, not only because Venezuela borders it to the north, but also because Lula, at the beginning of his term, tried to reintegrate Maduro into the continent’s politics and sought to influence the Venezuelan president in favor of holding democratic elections in the country. Venezuela.

In recent weeks, Maduro has made his rhetoric more extreme, and Lula himself has said he is “afraid.” Now the Brazilian government must decide what action to take.

For now, Brazil is cautiously demanding that the minutes of the meeting be made public. But other neighbors and partners have already objected to the election results in Venezuela, such as Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.