Machado: We achieved the greatest civic feat in the history of Venezuela

***The opposition leader announced a “fifth stage” in the fight, which consists of “cashing in” for Edmundo González’s victory

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said on Saturday that “the greatest civic feat in the history” of the country was carried out by the anti-Chavez movement through the standard-bearer of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González Urrutia, who – she said – “swept” the presidential elections, despite the fact that the official result gives victory to President Nicolás Maduro.

“They thought that by persecuting our witnesses we were not going to get our records, but within 24 hours we had the records digitalized,” said Machado during a demonstration in Caracas, where thousands of people gathered in defense of the victory of González Urrutia, who – the anti-Chavez supporters insist – won the presidential election.

The opposition claims that it collected, through witnesses and members of the voting table, “83.5%” of the minutes, which it later uploaded to a website, where any citizen can check the result with their ID number.

During his speech at the end of the protest, Machado announced a “fifth stage” that consists of “cashing in” for González Urrutia’s victory and “respecting every vote.”

“There is nothing above the voice of the sovereign and the sovereign spoke in Venezuela (…). Let the world and everyone within Venezuela recognize that the president-elect is Edmundo González Urrutia,” he said.

He also said that when Maduro saw himself “defeated and exposed,” he opted for the “cruelest of all policies,” which was “to entrench himself in a group of the high military command and order a campaign of repression, which has been the most horrible and cruelest in the history of Venezuela,” in reference to the actions of state security forces during the post-election protests.

Machado recalled that this week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression condemned the practices being carried out by the Maduro government, describing them as “state terrorism.”

“The Commission has never said this since the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone. This is something else (…) and the world has said it, it denounces it,” Machado said.

With information from EFE