The arrest warrant against opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia has opened a new phase of suspense in Venezuela. The government of Nicolás Maduro has been closing in on the opposition with arrests and judicial pressure. The candidate was summoned three times to testify before the Prosecutor’s Office as accused of five crimes. The fact that he did not appear led to the arrest warrant that was made public last Monday, but which has not yet been executed. In the midst of the judicial hunt, the 75-year-old diplomat is under guard in a location that has not been revealed, as is the leader of the opposition coalition, María Corina Machado. His lawyer, in any case, has clarified that he does not plan “either to leave Venezuela or ask for asylum” while he has denounced irregularities in the process.
González Urrutia is allegedly being investigated for publishing on the website Resultados con Venezuela copies of 83.5% of the voting records collected by his witnesses in the July 28 elections, according to which he won by more than 30 points over Maduro. The current president was proclaimed president the next day by the National Electoral Council (CNE) without having published the results in full and in a detailed manner. These documents, with which the opposition has denounced colossal fraud, are considered false by the Attorney General’s Office controlled by Maduro, which accuses González Urrutia of usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, conspiracy and sabotage of systems and has named him as the main person responsible for this website.
José Vicente Haro, the veteran diplomat’s lawyer, went to the Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday morning to submit a written statement in his defense in which he explained the arguments under which his client refused to appear at the summons issued by the authorities. In statements to the media, he said that due to alleged failures in the computer systems he could not formally receive the document or give him proof that it was received, so they asked him to return later, although he assured that they did receive paperwork from other processes. When he decided to leave, they did not want to return the document to him. “There is a situation of defenselessness in which his right to due process cannot be guaranteed. If there is no way to record a communication in which the reasons from a legal and constitutional point of view for not appearing were set forth, which are based precisely on the lack of guarantees for due process, his presumption of innocence and his guarantees of freedom should be respected. “You can imagine what would have happened if Edmundo González had appeared at the summons,” said the lawyer.
After the unsuccessful attempt to deliver the communication to the Prosecutor’s Office, the lawyer met throughout the afternoon for more than three hours with the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, and directors of the Public Ministry, where he was able to deliver the document in which his client sets out the reasons for not appearing at the summons last week. “They maintain their position and we maintain ours, so we deliver this communication where all the reasons from the legal, constitutional and political point of view are set out for why he did not attend the summons, taking into account that there are no institutional guarantees at this time for him to appear,” Haro said in statements to the media after nine o’clock at night, local time.
The lawyer maintains that the differences are centered on the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office considers the case to be criminal in nature and they assume that this is not the case. In the communication delivered to the prosecutor, the opposition candidate says that the accusations have no basis. “Such an appearance could only contribute to further intensifying social tension, in addition to consolidating a context of incriminating judicialization of politics that we should all reject,” wrote González Urrutia and insisted: “It must be taken into account that in recent weeks there have been public statements from high government spokespersons and from other State institutions that condemn me in advance and, as I say, without basis.”
In his one-page communication, the opposition candidate justifies his position and his claims after the disputed elections. “My conduct is guided at all times by respect for the law, in coherence with my career of public service to the nation, to which I have dedicated forty of my seventy-five years of life. With this will I have acted in relation to the elections of last July 28, demanding the verification of the minutes of the counting of votes from the tables.”
Among the irregularities of the process, Haro had pointed out that in a summons “one should not” prequalify crimes as was done, which, furthermore, “is not proper of an action of the Public Prosecutor’s Office”, but of “a court when the investigation is already advanced”. For this reason, he insists that the right to “the presumption of innocence” of González Urrutia is being violated, who has also declared on several occasions that the lack of independence of the public powers in Venezuela, documented in information from the UN on human rights violations, has led him to abstain from attending the appointments of the Prosecutor’s Office.
González Urrutia has kept a low profile since the Attorney General’s Office and Nicolás Maduro himself threatened to arrest him. The Chavista leader himself has hinted that the opposition candidate intends to flee the country. “He is preparing his escape,” Maduro told his followers a few days ago. The candidate’s entourage is also cautious. They have denied that he is seeking asylum in a diplomatic legation in Caracas, as six of Machado’s direct collaborators did months ago, who went to the Argentine legation and with the breaking of diplomatic relations the headquarters was placed under the custody of Brazil. “In no way does Edmundo González Urrutia contemplate this possibility: neither leaving Venezuela nor asking for asylum nor taking refuge in an embassy as a guest. These are alternatives that he does not consider to correspond to the will of the Venezuelans expressed on July 28 on the occasion of the presidential elections,” said Haro.
In recent weeks, the Chavista authorities have arrested more than a dozen leaders of the Unitary Platform that supports González Urrutia, including Machado’s lawyer, Perkins Rocha, who acted as a national witness in the elections. The arrest warrant against Maduro’s main rival in the presidential elections has been severely condemned in almost all instances of the international community. Chavismo has entrenched itself and has unleashed a hunt against those who criticize it, leaving the country once again at a crossroads with little room for maneuver. The step taken with the issuance of the arrest warrant complicates the possibilities of opening negotiations to find a solution to the conflict, as the Latin American powers of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, all governed by leftist presidents, have attempted, with few results. On Monday, the door was opened to a new meeting between Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro and López Obrador with Maduro and on Tuesday the Colombian foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, confirmed it. However, that meeting had not yet been confirmed as of midday on Wednesday.
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