Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino said on Friday that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won Venezuela’s presidential elections — only to be contradicted two hours later by a communiqué from her own ministry.
“We can all confirm, without any doubt, that the legitimate winner and President-elect is Edmundo González,” Mondino posted on X at 10:54. She referred to the website where the Venezuelan opposition published results by polling stations several days ago. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE, by its Spanish initials) has yet to publish such disaggregated data, making their claims of a win for Maduro impossible to verify.
However, at 12:56, the Argentine Foreign Ministry published a communiqué stating that, while Argentina was one of the first countries to reject the official results of Sunday’s elections, it “is following developments in Venezuela with extreme attention and concern with a view to making a definitive statement.”
A spokesperson for the ministry said Argentina’s official position is that expressed in the communiqué, not Mondino’s X post.
It is not the first time the government has snubbed Mondino — in June, Milei traveled to Italy for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting with his sister, Presidency Secretary Karina Milei; Ambassador to the United States Gerardo Werthein; and economic advisor Demian Reidel. However, Mondino was not invited.
Late on Sunday, the CNE claimed that incumbent President Nicolás Maduro had won the vote with 51.2%, but did not provide any further information. Maduro then claimed that a “cyber attack” had prevented the government from releasing further electoral data.
The results were contested both domestically and abroad. Electoral observers from the Carter Center said that the vote “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.”
On Sunday, Argentine President Javier Milei called Maduro “a dictator” on X and said that he had lost. Earlier that day, Mondino cited exit polls saying that González Urrutia had won. Maduro responded by calling Milei a “monster face” and a “cowardly bug” during his victory speech, appearing to challenge the Argentine leader to a boxing match.
On Thursday evening, the United States government said there was “overwhelming evidence” that González Urrutia was the clear winner.
The next day, the head of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, gave a second press conference saying that Maduro got 51.95% of the vote and that Gonzáles Urrutia got 43.18%. However, the government has not published any other information. The CNE’s website has been down since Sunday.