The coordinator of the International Political Council of María Corina Machado’s team, Antonio Ledezma, said this Friday that the growing international support for the alleged opposition victory in the elections in Venezuela opens the way to the proclamation of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as president and creates the conditions for “a peaceful transition with guarantees.”
Ledezma, who is in exile in Madrid, also demanded that “the brutal repression unleashed by the Maduro regime in recent days” be stopped “as soon as possible.”
The opposition leader highlighted the “very clear position” taken by the Biden Administration in recognizing González Urrutia’s victory and also the support of the G-7 and Latin American countries to demand transparency regarding the electoral scrutiny from the Government of Nicolás Maduro, who has been declared president-elect by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
All of this “leaves no room for doubt that the prevailing conviction in the world is that the verifiable records award the victory, with an immense advantage, to the candidate supported by María Corina Machado (González Urrutia) and voted for massively by millions of Venezuelans,” he stressed.
Ledezma spoke hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in which he said that Washington had concluded, based on “overwhelming evidence,” that opposition candidate Gonzalez was the winner of the presidential elections in Venezuela and called for a peaceful transition.
Venezuelan electoral authorities announced last Sunday that, with 80% of the votes counted, Maduro had 51.2% of the votes, but so far they have not released the voting results table by table as requested by the international community.
However, the majority opposition, grouped in the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), which claims to have more than 80% of the minutes thanks to the work of witnesses and table members, asserts that its standard-bearer, González Urrutia, won by a wide margin.
Before Blinken’s statement acknowledging the opposition’s victory, to which Maduro responded by asking the US to “stay out of” Venezuela, the Venezuelan head of state had expressed his willingness to resume direct dialogue with Washington on the basis of what was discussed in Qatar at the beginning of July (the US and Venezuela have not had diplomatic relations since 2019).
In his statements to EFE, Ledezma stressed that the US has made it clear that the Qatar dialogue, “to which Maduro maliciously clings,” is a “chapter of the past that does not give rise to tactics to distort the current reality or to tricks simulating negotiations without good intentions.”
“Therefore, the phase that is beginning is to proceed with the proclamation of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, at the same time that the conditions are created for a peaceful transition with guarantees for the political factors called to facilitate such a procedure,” he stressed.
Regarding the fact that María Corina Machado, who was unable to run for President because she was disqualified from holding public office, has announced that she is “in hiding,” Ledezma said that she is doing so to protect herself from “a style of repression that has never been experienced before in Venezuela.”
The opposition leader denounced that the repression involves “police forces created and trained to carry out such vile tasks,” but also “mercenaries from Russia (Warner Group), from the Black Wasps of Cuba and Nicaraguans under the orders of the dictator Daniel Ortega.”
However, Ledezma said, “citizens will continue to demonstrate peacefully, as María Corina Machado announced yesterday, and this Saturday there will be demonstrations in all cities and towns in Venezuela. We will also do so in most countries in the world where there are Venezuelans from the diaspora.”
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2024-09-01 19:30:16
