LIMA, (Reuters) – South American leaders were to make a collective show of support for Venezuelan President-elect Nicolas Maduro in Lima yesterday, officials said, as the United States and his opponents call for a recount of the disputed vote.
Maduro will attend the last-minute meeting of the regional group Unasur in Peru a day before he is to be sworn in on today. He was named by late President Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in March, as his chosen successor.
Protests erupted in Venezuela after Maduro won Sunday’s election by a narrow margin of about 2 percentage points, and at least eight people have been killed in violent clashes.
Before boarding a plane to Lima, Maduro said in a televised speech: “In Venezuela we don’t have an opposition, we have a permanent conspiracy cheered on by the United States.”
Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales said Washington had no right to question Maduro’s victory because George W. Bush won the presidency by a similarly narrow margin in 2004.
“This is clearly meddling,” Morales said in La Paz. “We condemn this and repudiate it. We won’t permit that Bolivia or Latin America be treated as the U.S. government’s backyard.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday told lawmakers he favored a recount because of possible voting irregularities.
Maduro’s supporters have defended the legitimacy of his narrow win with repeated references to the 2000 U.S. election dispute, when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida and Bush was declared the winner in the state by just 537 votes.
Although moderate South American leaders were expected to voice support for Maduro, it appeared unlikely that they would criticize Washington as openly as Morales.
The governments of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Argentina, among others, have already recognized Maduro’s victory, but Washington has not.
The European Union has said it is “concerned by the growing polarization of Venezuelan society” and suggested Venezuelan authorities consider an audit of the vote.
