Biden officials defend Venezuela policy after election problems

The Biden administration went on the defensive on Monday over its policy bet that Venezuela’s election will oust strongman Nicolás Maduro, a day after he was declared the winner of the presidential election despite multiple irregularities and opinion polls showing him losing.

In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials responded to questions about what the U.S. will do next and whether the Biden administration’s negotiations with Maduro, which have included lifting some oil sanctions and releasing prisoners, have failed to bring democratic change to the South American country.

Officials defended the decisions, saying they allowed opposition candidates to be included on the ballot, and said they were prepared for the possibility that Sunday’s election would not result in a change of government in Venezuela.

“I want to emphasize that despite all of these issues that we’re discussing right now, Venezuela did hold elections yesterday, allowed opposition candidates to participate and allowed the voting process to take place,” one of the officials said. “That was simply a result of the adjustments we made to our sanctions policy last year.”

Officials said their main concern was that the results announced by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council “did not match the data we obtained through the rapid vote counting mechanism and other sources, which suggests that the announced results may not correspond to how people voted.”

Maduro’s electoral commission says he defeated opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez 51.2% to 44.2%based on data from 80% of polling stations. Edison Research, a trusted pollster that conducts Election Day exit polls in the U.S., predicted that Gonzalez would win in a landslide with 65% of the vote.

Earlier on Monday, White House national security adviser John Kirby said the United States would not rush to react to the results until there was more clarity.

“We will reserve our judgment until we see the actual election results,” he said, urging Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release the data.

Senior U.S. officials told reporters the process was still in its early stages and they were awaiting reports from international observers, but they did not say how the United States would respond if the fraud allegations were proven true.

To gain time

Sunday’s election is an important benchmark for the Biden administration’s dealings with Maduro.

The Biden administration is pursuing a different course as officials are eager to reject the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy, which imposed tough sanctions on the country’s oil industry, and to rally international diplomatic support for an alternative, opposition-led interim government.

Under Biden, support for the interim government led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó gradually eroded until Venezuela’s opposition broke away from it entirely. Biden administration officials also held talks with Maduro’s representatives to negotiate the lifting of oil sanctions in exchange for Maduro agreeing to allow opposition figures to participate in presidential elections that were supposed to be fair and monitored by neutral international observers.

The carrot was extended to Maduro, including the release of his two Wife’s nephew Sentenced to prison in the U.S. for drug trafficking Alex SaboThe indictments of his financiers and agents for money laundering were enough to bring the Venezuelan leader back to the negotiating table with the opposition, after the two sides signed a deal in Barbados last October with the backing of the United States.

Venezuela’s famously fractured opposition has finally come together under the leadership of longtime Maduro rival Maria Corina Machado, whose campaign was so successful that the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court would not allow her to run. Eleventh-hour international pressure led electoral authorities to allow González to run in her place.

As harassment of Machado and her campaign continued ahead of Sunday’s election, it became clear that Maduro had walked away from the deal.

The Biden administration has been criticized for months for supporting an election that many believe could be a sham, potentially delegitimizing the process. Several Cuban-American politicians, including Senator Marco Rubio, who helped craft Latin America policy during the Trump administration, have warned that Maduro will use the negotiations to buy time and gain concessions from the United States.

The U.S. intelligence community assessed in a February report that Maduro is likely to Stick to governing and refuse to admit defeat in the presidential election.

On X, Rubio said the Maduro regime “ran the most predictable, ridiculous sham election in modern history” and accused the Biden administration of easing sanctions as part of an election deal in Venezuela.

Biden administration officials were asked on Monday whether they regretted releasing Saab or believed their policy had failed. Responding to critics, they revealed that the administration also planned for elections that did not lead to a transition of power in Venezuela.

“We have always known that there would be a variety of scenarios as the election unfolded,” one of the officials said. “The events this week were certainly one of the scenarios we had considered and had been planning for.”

But if this was expected, the government should have been ready last night to respond, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Council of the Americas Society..

“They should have had a coordinated response,” he said, noting that regional governments’ reactions to Maduro’s reelection announcement varied from public rejection to calls for more information to open support. Meanwhile, he added, the United States was calling on electoral authorities to release an official vote count, which could take months and could even be falsified.

“But the timeline is accelerating, and Maduro has begun threatening Machado and others,” Farnsworth said. “The response must be immediate, or it will be too late.”

Some Venezuela observers say the election could still lead to change in Venezuela because some members of the Venezuelan government may realize that Maduro’s continued hold on to power after a fraudulent election will be an obstacle to his quest for international legitimacy and access to financial resources.

A senior U.S. official said those views also influenced U.S. policy.

“I think the Maduro regime understands that if it is proven that they ran this election fraudulently, then it is not good for their long-term goal of normalizing Venezuela’s diplomatic and political relationships more broadly in the region,” the official said. “And, frankly, it is not good for their political standing in Venezuela. That’s all part of the calculation here.”