Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
09-09-2024
The Venezuelan government has said opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has left the country, seeking asylum in Spain.
Gonzalez has been in hiding, and a warrant issued for his arrest after the opposition disputed July’s presidential election result in which the government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolas Maduro the winner.
“After taking refuge voluntarily at the Spanish embassy in Caracas a few days ago, (Gonzalez Urrutia) asked the Spanish government for political asylum,” Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said on social media.
She added that Caracas had agreed to his safe passage and that he had left.
Venezuela has been in a political crisis since authorities declared President Maduro the victor of the 28 July election.
The opposition claimed it had evidence Gonzalez had won by a comfortable margin, and uploaded detailed voting tallies to the internet which suggest Gonzalez beat Maduro convincingly.
A number of countries, including the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries, have refused to recognize President Maduro as the winner without Caracas releasing detailed voting data.
Prior to leaving the country, Gonzalez had been in hiding for a month, ignoring three successive summons to appear before prosecutors.
Post-election violence in Venezuela has claimed 27 lives and left 192 people injured while the government says it has arrested some 2,400 people.
Venezuela’s military chief claimed Tuesday that the country was facing a coup, as new protests were expected following President Nicolas Maduro’s disputed victory in the weekend’s election. The country’s opposition leaders say they won the vote by a significant margin, and a local NGO has reported at least six people killed in unrest that has followed the official declaration of Maduro’s win.
Venezuela’s attorney general Tarek William Saab said 749 people had been arrested amid the protests, and he warned that number could rise in the coming hours, according to media.
Most would be charged with “resisting authority and, in the most serious cases, terrorism,” Saab said.
Election officials in the tightly controlled Latin American nation declared Maduro the winner , granting him a third six-year term after the weekend election, despite exit polls that showed him losing by a significant margin, according to challenger Edmundo González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who have claimed to have proof that Gonzalez received over twice the votes Maduro did.
“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” Gonzalez said Monday outside his campaign headquarters in Caracas, media reported. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”
President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva jointly called for the “immediate release of full, transparent, and detailed voting data at the polling station level by the Venezuelan electoral authorities,” a White House statement said. Both presidents said the election outcome represents “a critical moment for democracy in the hemisphere.”
The opposition leaders invited supporters to gather peacefully on Tuesday and urged people to remain calm. In a social media post, González called on the nation’s security forces to “respect the will of the people voiced on July 28 and to halt the repression of peaceful demonstrations” but declaring the military’s backing for Maduro, Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino denounced the protests. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
