Edmundo Gonzalez issued a statement on Thursday in which he assures that he was not pressured by the Spanish government to leave Venezuela: “I have not been coerced by the Spanish government or by the Spanish ambassador in Venezuela, Ramón Santos. The diplomatic efforts carried out had the sole purpose of facilitating my departure from the country, without exerting any kind of pressure on me,” says the text of the opposition candidate who won the elections against a Nicolás Maduro who does not want to recognize his defeat and has tightened his grip on power despite evidence that he committed fraud.
The PP, the opposition party in Spain, had accused Pedro Sánchez’s government hours earlier of maneuver in favor of Chavismo to secure the exile of Edmundo González and divide the opposition. González, in a very forceful letter, denies that this has happened: “The Spanish Government undertook to guarantee my safety during the journey to the Spanish Armed Forces plane, as well as my arrival in Spain, as it happened. These measures had the main purpose of allowing the continuation of the processing of my request for asylum before the Spanish State, under conditions of security and respect for my rights.”
Edmundo González says that no Spanish diplomat, including Ambassador Ramón Santos, coerced or forced him to leave Venezuela. “Their purpose was to facilitate my departure from the country.” pic.twitter.com/0gDvDGtK4O
— Juan Diego Quesada (@jdquesada) September 19, 2024
Edmundo González’s departure from the country on September 7 had been shrouded in mystery. Harassed by the Chavista justice system, the opposition leader decided within days to leave for Spain. On Wednesday, however, it was learned that in order to be allowed to leave the Spanish embassy in Caracas and board a plane, the Rodríguez brothers, Maduro’s two main political operators, forced him to sign a document in which he accepted the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, which in a resolution decreed that the current president had won the elections, despite all the evidence that this was not the case. In that document, Edmundo also promised not to operate as an elected president in exile. Chavismo released images in which the Chavista leaders and Edmundo could be seen signing that letter at the residence of the Spanish ambassador. Photographs of Ramón Santos accompanying the opposition leader to the steps of the plane were also released.
The revelation caused a shock in Venezuela, but also in Spain, where the issue has become a matter of national policy of the first order. The deputy secretary of Institutional Affairs of the PP, Esteban González Pons, said in an interview on Es Radio that the Government of Spain has been involved in what he describes as a “coup d’état.” Pons said that the Sánchez administration had “coerced and sent the elected president into exile.” “The Government of Spain has been a necessary collaborator.” The Government has responded that it limited itself to facilitating the departure of Edmundo, who at that time was subject to an arrest warrant issued by the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, in the hands of Chavismo. Government sources indicate that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, spoke up to four times in person with Edmundo González — twice when he was in Caracas and twice on the plane on the way to Madrid — to ensure that he had the free will to go to Spain, that that was what he had decided. González’s response was unequivocal, according to this information. This statement by Edmundo has come to confirm that this was so.
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