Panama offers Maduro temporary political asylum to resolve Venezuelan election crisis

The president of Panama said Friday he has offered Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro political asylum to facilitate a peaceful transition to democracy in the South American country amid backchannel negotiations led by Brazil to solve the ongoing political crisis.

President José Raúl Mulino told CNN en Español Friday that he had sent a message to Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva offering Panama as a transit point so that Maduro could leave Venezuela for a third country.

“I maintain the position of granting political asylum” to Nicolás Maduro, said Mulino. “If that is the contribution, the sacrifice that Panama has to make, offering our land so that this man and his family can leave Venezuela, Panama would do it.”

“If Panama is the transit country for a permanent exile of Maduro and his clan, then we would do it with the necessary security,” he added.

Mulino’s comments came as the United States and other countries are trying to find a negotiated solution to the crisis in Venezuela, after the Maduro-controlled national electoral council declared him the winner of the July 28 presidential election despite strong evidence he lost by a wide margin to opposition candidate Edmundo González.

Mulino said he has had no contact with Maduro but sent the message to President Lula, who is “close” to Maduro and “has had the chance to speak with a member of the Maduro government.” He said if his offer is accepted, Maduro would be in Panama only temporarily.

“I don’t think he can stay in Panama,” Mulino said. “That would cost me a lot to sell it to the public.”

Little else has surfaced publicly regarding contacts made by the governments of Brazil and other countries, including Colombia and Mexico, which have said they wanted to facilitate negotiations between Maduro and the opposition. A U.S. official said he could not “confirm or deny” that the Biden administration is in direct contact with the Maduro government.

Maduro has not publicly signaled he is willing to engage in talks with the opposition. His forces have arrested about 2,000 people, he said, and 24 people have died in violent clashes. His attorney general is accusing Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, and González of inciting an insurrection. He also ordered a temporary ban on social media platforms X and Signal.

On Thursday, Machado said the opposition would not negotiate its electoral victory nor share the government with Maduro, but is open to negotiations leading to a democratic transition and willing to offer “safeguards” and “incentives” to start the talks.

Mulino said the negotiations ahead, if they happen, need to start immediately and are likely to involve complex issues.

“There is a possible negotiation in which, unfortunately, very delicate issues of human rights... etc. will be put on the table,” he said. “But everything is for the well-being of democracy and to help Venezuela get out of this big problem.”

The Panamanian president is trying to convene a meeting of regional leaders next week to discuss the situation in Venezuela, but said it is unlikely that the gathering will result in “forceful action.”

On Friday, the Atlanta-based Carter Center again confirmed that González had won the presidential election, and that the paper vote tallies called actas gathered by the opposition were legitimate records of the vote. The center said the paper tallies are identical to the information the Venezuelan Electoral Council received on July 28. The council has not disclosed its own tallies despite international calls to do so.

Jenny Lincoln, the chief of the Carter Center electoral mission invited by the Maduro government to Venezuela to observe the vote, said the Venezuelan electronic voting system, which she called “impressive,” provides two ways to count and verify the votes: the electronic vote records that are transmitted via landlines and satellites phones to the National Electoral Council and printouts of the vote tally from every precinct, which are provided to witnesses from all political parties and electoral observers.

“This is public information that was distributed at the time the machines closed and that means that quite a few people, not just the [electoral council] have in hand the proof of these votes from the night of July 28,” she said. “Based on these actas compiled and analyzed by various entities, it can be confirmed that Edmundo González won by a majority.”

Lincoln said that by midnight on election day, the Venezuelan national electoral council had received the count on 92% of the votes cast, not 80%, like its president, Elvis Amoroso, announced, according to witnesses inside the electoral council’s voting “transmission room.” She also said Maduro’s party, the PSUV, also has copies of the actas because they had witnesses in all precincts.

“They should hand over the true records from their own machines,” she said. “And if they hand over the true records, they themselves will confirm the data that the opposition has in their hands because they are the same, and that is public information.”

_____