President Biden is joining Latin America’s far-left politicians in a campaign that, if it were a movie, might be called “Saving Soldier Maduro.” Biden announced his support just hours after Brazilian President Lula da Silva called for new elections in Venezuela.

“Yes,” the president said on Thursday when a reporter asked him if he supported the idea of ​​a new election in Venezuela, Reuters reports. The question was likely prompted by the fact that President Maduro was scheduled to announce the official results of the July 28 election on Friday.

Maduro declared victory despite credible figures showing the opposition had won two-thirds of the vote. Unrest broke out and on Thursday morning da Silva, together with Colombian President Petro, proposed two alternative courses of action to calm the streets and break the political impasse.

Messrs Lula and Petro called for a transitional government in which power would be shared between Maduro’s dictatorship and the opposition led by the election winner Edmundo González. Alternatively, they proposed new elections.

Biden’s support of the second option, a new election, appears to reverse an earlier position in Washington, outlined by Secretary of State Blinken on August 1: “Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes.”

Although independent observers found that Gonzales had indeed won the election by a large margin, Maduro declared himself the winner. Supported by Beijing, Moscow and Havana, the dictator sent his shock troops into the streets in full force to suppress protests and the increasingly loud calls for a return to democracy in the crisis-ridden country.

Some Venezuelans were skeptical from the start that there could be free and fair elections. Since Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez took power in Caracas, “there has been no possibility of holding real elections,” exiled Venezuelan journalist Maibort Petit tells the Sun, adding that another round of voting now would be pointless.

Friends and family members who served as election observers on July 28 will be reluctant to return because the regime has their names and addresses, Petit says. “Nobody wants that. Remember that more than 2,000 people have been thrown in prison since the election.” Maduro, Petit says, controls all state institutions, including the Supreme Court.

As for Mr da Silva’s idea of ​​power-sharing with the opposition, she says, Venezuelans compare it to a similar idea in 2009, when Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe agreed to share power with the African country’s opposition. The result was that Mugabe remained in power until 2017, when he was ousted in a military coup.

Despite skepticism about Maduro’s commitment to democracy, the Biden administration, Norway and several Latin American leaders negotiated with Caracas for more than a year to allow the opposition to participate in free elections. In a deal reached last fall, Biden agreed to lift key American sanctions to allow the July 28 election to take place.

The idea that Venezuela could return to democracy remained fashionable even after the most popular opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, was barred from running in the elections by the regime. She is now hiding somewhere in Venezuela for fear of retaliation after her passport was confiscated by the regime. Mr Gonzales’ whereabouts are also unknown.

Exactly 24 hours after the election, “we had already counted enough ballots by QR code and physically,” Ms. Machado recently told reporters from her hiding place, as reported by Rafael Oliveira of the Sun. “The world knows what happened, the people of Venezuela have spoken loudly.”

But instead of helping the opposition to win, Latin America’s leading left-wing politicians, who have the most influence on Maduro, immediately began working toward a compromise. At the same time, Washington almost lost interest.

Messrs da Silva and Petro – and to a lesser extent Mexican President Lopez Obrador – could have given Maduro an ultimatum, former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda recently wrote: “Unless Maduro quickly presents the official election results, Latin America will recognize Gonzales as the winner.”

But Maduro, he added, knew the three leaders were unlikely to challenge him, and even if they did, their deadline would be long enough for everyone to forget about Venezuela and for him to have plenty of time to falsify the results. In fact, Castaneda wrote, “The dictator is still there, time is running out, and the opposition is exhausted and frightened, and for good reason.”

The fact that Biden is supporting da Silva’s tactics is “terrible,” Castaneda, now a professor at New York University, told the Sun.