MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Borrell insists Maduro needs to produce the minutes

In these circumstances, Maduro's alleged victory “cannot be accepted,” Borrell explained

The European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell highlighted Monday that Venezuela was up for some “serious crisis” should Caracas continue not to produce the minutes of the July 28 polls which the National Electoral Council (CNE) said favored incumbent President Nicolás Maduro Moros.

“If Maduro insists on saying he has won and does not want to understand that, for the international community, without verification, there is no assumption of results, Venezuela can enter a serious crisis. We are all trying to prevent this from happening,” Borrell underlined during an appearance at the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander, northern Spain.

Borrell also argued that Maduro “should have done it already, he has had time” to release the documents supporting his alleged victory, which can therefore “not be accepted.”

“I know that Maduro has dedicated very affectionate words to me, it is not the first time, but I have to insist: If the results cannot be verified, they cannot be accepted and, for the moment, they are not verifiable. Well, rather, they are verifiable through the information provided by the opposition,” Borrell went on.,

The CNE claimed Maduro won with 51.95% of the vote against Edmundo González Urrutia's 43.18%. But the opposition published a copy of 81 % of the minutes it collected during election day which would prove it won with 67% support.

Borrell also said Maduro's resorting to the Supreme Court (TSJ) was a sarcastic thing to do. “I don't know what it is going to issue as a sentence because its function is not to count the electoral results,” he stressed while recalling that over 2,000 people were still under detention by Maduro's regime.