By Lisandra Paraguassu
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Friday that he believes the Venezuelan government has authoritarian inclinations, but added he would not label President Nicolas Maduro’s administration a dictatorship.
“Venezuela has a very unpleasant regime, but I don’t think it’s a dictatorship,” Lula said in a radio interview. “It is a government with an authoritarian bias, but not a dictatorship like many we know around the world.”
Lula reiterated Brazil’s call for Venezuela to release voting tallies from the widely contested elections that reinstated Maduro in late July. Both Maduro and the opposition have claimed victory.
Brazil and its other neighbor Colombia have sought to find a solution to the crisis in Venezuela. On Thursday, they and the U.S. floated the idea of a new election, but both Maduro and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have ruled it out.
Lula repeated he would only recognize the winner of the July vote if electoral authorities released detailed voting tallies.
“Where are the tallies? I can only recognize a winner if they prove the election was democratic and clean,” said the leftist leader, who has traditionally been friendlier with Maduro but adopted a more neutral stance on the election.
The Brazilian president had also suggested earlier this week a potential “coalition government” as a way out of the crisis.
According to Brazilian sources, the ideas floated by Lula and his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro are “tentative” and have not been formally put on the table. The intention, they said, is to make Maduro signal that he is willing to negotiate.
Venezuela’s electoral authority proclaimed Maduro won 51% of the vote but has not divulged full vote tallies.
Tallies in possession of the opposition, which it has posted to a public website, show its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez received 67% of the vote.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Christina Fincher and Marguerita Choy)
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