International
How Latin America has reacted: from the rejection of Chile and Argentina waiting for Brazil and Mexico
After knowing the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on the presidential elections that, according to the entity, was won by President Nicolás Maduro, there have been various reactions in Latin America from the request for transparency of Chile and Argentina to the caution of Brazil and Mexico.
One of the first to react was the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who at first said that the results “are difficult to believe” and on Monday he claimed that it is necessary to deliver all the electoral records to both independent international observers and the opposition.
“As long as that is not done, we as a country are going to refrain from recognizing what the National Electoral Council has pointed out,” Boric said.
“I have stated, and I have also discussed it with the chancellor and with different people in Latin America and in the world, that the elections, and elections that generate as much expectation as this, have to be absolutely transparent and verifiable by international observers who are not dependent or supporters of the Government,” added the Chilean leader.
The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, described on Monday the results of this Sunday’s presidential elections in Venezuela as an “electoral scam” and ignored the announcement of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of that country, which gave Nicolás Maduro as the winner, results that the opposition denounced for irregular.
“Not even he believes the electoral scam that celebrates. Neither does the Argentine Republic,” the Argentine president wrote about Maduro on his profile on the social network X.
“We do not recognize fraud, we call on the international community to unite to restore the rule of law in Venezuela, and we remind the Venezuelan people that the doors of our homeland are open to every man who chooses to live in freedom,” added the publication of the ultraliberal politician.
“Condemn the electoral fraud perpetrated by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Argentina demands total transparency in the counting of votes. We are not going to consolidate any results without the support of international observers; of course, that they are not puppets of the Chavista regime,” the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, said earlier.
The Government of Brazil celebrated on Monday the “peaceful character” of the elections in Venezuela, but ratified that it will wait for all the results to pronounce on the victory attributed by the electoral authorities to Nicolás Maduro.
In an official statement, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “reaffirms” that “the principle of popular sovereignty must be observed through the impartial verification of the results” and adds that Brazil “waits, in that context,” the publication of all the data “detailed by a polling station.”
That last requirement, according to the statement, is “an indispensable step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the result of the electoral lawsuit.”
In the same waiting line, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke out, who said that he will recognize Maduro’s triumph, if Venezuela’s CNE “confirms the trend” after Sunday’s elections, although he asked to “wait for the count.”
“We are going to wait for the result, and when the count has been carried out, see what the legal process is and then we are going to pronounce, if the electoral authority confirms this trend, we are going to recognize the Government elected by the people of Venezuela,” López Obrador said in his morning conference.
The Mexican ruler assured that “they cannot ignore any result” of the CNE, which during the night announced that Maduro won with 51.2% of the votes compared to 44.2% by Edmundo González Urrutia of the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) of Venezuela.
The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, announced that he “suspends” diplomatic relations and announces the withdrawal of his diplomatic corps in Venezuela “until a complete review of the minutes” of the votes is carried out after rejecting the results of the elections.
Mulino, who pointed out the “deterioration” during the last years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, said: “I make this decision out of respect for the history of Panama, the millions of Venezuelans who chose our homeland to live, and my democratic convictions, I cannot allow my silence to turn into complicity.”
“I believe, and I hope I am wrong, that the flow of Venezuelans will increase for obvious reasons and we have to take the appropriate decisions to safeguard their life and integrity,” Mulino said.
At the same time, the Government of Peru denounced the attempt of the Venezuelan authorities to “consolidate a fraud” and detailed that it remains “in active observation” in the face of the possible “migratory effects” of the announcement of the re-election of Nicolás Maduro.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that, along with other competent authorities, it is “in a state of active observation in anticipation of migratory effects as a result of the seriousness of the course of Venezuelan electoral events.”
The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, was one of the first leaders in the region to react and considered that Maduro’s “victory” is a “great way” to remember the late leader Hugo Chávez on his birthday.
“We congratulate the Venezuelan people and President @NicolasMaduro for the electoral victory of this historic July 28. Great way to remember Commander Hugo Chávez,” Arce wrote on the social network X, where earlier he recalled in another message the 70th anniversary of the birth of the former Venezuelan president.
Arce, who has a political affinity with Maduro, also maintained that he followed “closely” the “democratic party” in Venezuela and greeted “that the will of the Venezuelan people has been respected at the polls.”
The congratulations were also joined by the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, who described the result as a “great victory that that heroic people” delivers to Chávez, while the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel considered it as a “triumph of dignity.”
For its part, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) congratulated Maduro, for what he sees as an “unobjectible triumph” in the presidential elections.
“The member states of the ALBA congratulate the people and government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, for the unobjectionable triumph of President Nicolás Maduro Moros in the presidential elections this Sunday, July 28, 2024,” the bloc said in a statement published on its website.
International
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
The American press agency Associated Press (AP) announced this Friday that it has sued three members of the Donald Trump Administration after being banned from the Oval Office and the presidential plane Air Force One for not complying with the directive of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not to be retaliated for it by the Government. The Constitution does not allow the Government to control freedom of expression,” the media maintains.
In its style guide, AP decided to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name”, still mentioning the new name chosen by Trump, since it is a body of water that shares a border with Mexico and Cuba.
The White House formally blocked AP’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One on February 14. “We are very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The agency’s lawsuit, of 18 pages and filed before a federal court in Washington DC, alleges that they have decided to take this step to claim their right to editorial independence and prevent the Executive from coercing journalists to use only a language approved by it.
Trump signed the executive order to change the name to Gulf of America on January 20, the first day of his return to power. He later named February 9 as ‘ Gulf of America Day’.
The AP complaint is specifically directed against the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his number two, Taylor Budowich, and the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
This Thursday, more than thirty US media asked the Government to restore AP’s participation in presidential events and not to take into account “the editorial point of view” when limiting access to the White House.
Among the signatories are the television networks Fox News and Newsmax, with a conservative tinge, in addition to other large newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic.
AP highlighted when reporting on his complaint that this Friday Trump referred to that agency as “radical left-wing lunatics”: It is “a third-rate company with a first name,” he said about it, the main one in the country and founded in 1846.
International
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
The Legislature of the city of Buenos Aires approved this Friday the suspension of the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), a measure that, according to the deputy head of government, Clara Muzzio, “allows to save 20 billion pesos (about 18,894 million dollars)”, and advanced the legislative elections for May 18.
“The City Legislature suspended the PASO, a measure that saves $20 billion for neighbors,” Muzzio announced on Friday.
For his part, the mayor of the City, Jorge Macri, maintained that the PASO “were an expensive mechanism that only solved the problems of politicians, not of the people.”
The May 18 elections, which were originally scheduled for July, will be held through the Single Electronic Ballot system.
In that instance, the inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires will elect their local legislators and, in October, they will have to return to the polls to define, together with the rest of the country, the composition of the chambers of Deputies and Senators.
“The fact that the elections are in May allows each Buenos Aires to decide on their own city, without being tied to national discussions,” said the mayor.
The project was approved in the Buenos Aires legislature with 55 votes in favor, 3 against and one abstention, after an agreement between the main political forces.
The suspension of the primaries in the City of Buenos Aires occurs one day after the Argentine Parliament approved the same measure at the national level.
The original project sent by the national government sought the elimination of the primary system but finally, given the lack of support for that objective, the government chose to promote an initiative that suspends them for this year.
The primary election system was first implemented in Argentina to define the candidates for the 2011 general elections, based on a political reform approved by Parliament at the end of 2009, with the aim of democratizing political representation, transparency and electoral equity.
According to the PASO system, to be qualified to compete in the general elections, candidates or lists of candidates must achieve at least 1.5% of the total votes in the primaries.
All parties are obliged to participate in the primaries, although they do not necessarily have to present more than one list of candidates to decide which one will lead to the general elections, an option for which the majority of the forces have opted in the last elections.
That is one of the reasons why the system has been questioned, among which are also its costs and the cumbersomeness of the organization.
International
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Friday that threatens to impose tariffs on foreign governments that apply digital fees to US companies, including Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
The order states that “foreign governments have exercised a growing extraterritorial authority over US companies, particularly in the technology sector,” and directly cites the taxes on digital services that “several business partners” apply since 2019.
According to the text, the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on those governments that use taxes or regulations that are “discriminatory, disproportionate or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property from US companies to that government or its chosen domestic entities.”
Trump delegates to the US Trade Representative the possibility of “renewing investigations” on the so-called technology fees of Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey, imposed in the first term of the Republican, and if so, “take all appropriate actions”, which would include the imposition of tariffs.
“US companies will no longer sustain failed foreign economies through fines and extortionational taxes,” says the White House document, which provides for a “process” for them to “report” these “disproportionate” measures to the Commercial Representative.
He also instructs him to investigate together with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce whether in the European Union or the United Kingdom the use of products or services of US companies is “required or encouraged” to “undermine freedom of expression”, political activity or, “otherwise, moderate content”.
It also suggests to the Representative, among other things, to hold “a panel” with its partners of the T-MEC (Canada and Mexico) on the tax on digital services in Canada, and identify ways to achieve a “permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
The order does not mention any specific company, but mainly affects large technology companies such as Apple, Google (subsidiary of Alphabet), Meta and Amazon, which have precisely starred in a resounded approach to President Trump since he won the elections in November.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump ordered to investigate the digital fees to his companies abroad and threatened to apply tariffs to the six countries indicated today; taxes were imposed in the government of his successor, the Democrat Joe Biden, and subsequently suspended.
Trump signed another executive order aimed at restricting access to US technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, what he calls “foreign adversaries”, including Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
The executive order does not specify in detail what measures will be taken to restrict the access of these “foreign adversaries” to US technology.
Under the label of “foreign adversaries”, the order identifies China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the “regime of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro”, according to the text.
Trump justifies his decision with the argument that “economic security is national security” and maintains that the country must protect its sensitive infrastructures and technologies, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors and advances in biotechnology.
The executive order focuses especially on China, pointing out that companies linked to Beijing have used investments in the US to access key technologies and that the Chinese government is taking advantage of US technology to modernize its military apparatus.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has announced several restrictions on trade with the aim of balancing the trade balance and pressuring countries such as Mexico and Canada to make concessions on immigration and efforts against drug trafficking.
It has imposed a 10% tariff on China, which is in addition to the rates already applied during its first term (2017-2021).
Trump’s new restrictions come after his predecessor, Joe Biden, took steps to limit exports of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technology to China, which led Beijing to respond with export controls on graphite, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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