The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) called an extraordinary meeting for this Wednesday to address the results of the elections in Venezuela at the request of a dozen member countries.
The meeting will take place on July 31 at 3:00 PM EDT (7:00 PM GMT) in the Simón Bolívar hall at the OAS headquarters in Washington.
The urgent session was called at the request of twelve member countries, including the seven Latin American governments to which Nicolás Maduro ordered the withdrawal of their diplomatic staff in Caracas.
The meeting was convened "at the request of the Permanent Missions of Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the United States, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay."
In the last few hours, the Government of Venezuela demanded that Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay immediately withdraw their representatives from Venezuelan territory, in retaliation for expressing their concern about irregularities in the elections.
So far, the OAS has not commented on the elections, amidst the rejection from the international community and the Venezuelan opposition regarding the results provided by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.
The OAS meeting this Wednesday will be broadcast live through its website and on its Facebook accounts and the YouTube platform. It will also feature interpretation in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.
Election Results and Controversies
In its first report released early Monday morning, the CNE announced Nicolás Maduro as the winner with 51.20% of the votes, compared to 44.20% for opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, with 80% of the votes counted.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado, for her part, rejected the official results and claimed that the "newly elected president" is the candidate from the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), asserting that with more than 40% of the transmitted reports, he obtained 70% of the votes, while Maduro only received 30%.
The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, announced the results more than six hours after the closing of the polling stations, and mentioned that the data transmission system suffered an attack that will be investigated, which is why the announcement of the winner was delayed.
In recent hours, Venezuela has experienced a climate of increasing instability, marked by protests, the toppling of Chávez statues, and other incidents that reveal the discontent of a significant portion of the citizenry with the electoral outcome.
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