Venezuela’s main opposition candidate in the last presidential election, Edmundo González, denied on Thursday (19) that he had been coerced by the Spanish government to leave his country and seek asylum in Madrid.
Earlier, during an interview with EsRadio, Esteban González Pons, deputy secretary for institutional affairs of the conservative Popular Party (PP), which opposes the current Spanish government, had stated that González was coerced at the Spanish embassy in Caracas to go into exile.
“I was not coerced by either the Spanish government or the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela, Ramón Santos. The diplomatic procedures carried out had the sole objective of facilitating my departure from the country, without exerting any type of pressure on me,” González said in a statement.
“The Spanish government committed to guaranteeing my safety during the journey to the Spanish Armed Forces plane, as well as upon my arrival in Spain, as happened. The main objective of these measures was to allow the continuation of the processing of my asylum application before the Spanish State, in conditions of security and respect for my rights,” added the opposition member.
Early last week, González, whose coalition maintains that he was the true winner of the July 28 Venezuelan presidential election (and has posted copies of the voting records on a website to prove it), went into exile in Spain.
He had an arrest warrant issued against him by the Venezuelan Justice Department, rigged by the dictator Nicolás Maduro, who was named as the winner of the election by the Chavista National Electoral Council (CNE).
Earlier on Thursday, Pons had said that the Spanish government, led by socialist Pedro Sánchez, “is complicit in the operation to make Maduro a dictator for longer.”
He said González had taken refuge in the Dutch Embassy in Caracas since the day after the election and “was transferred to the Spanish ambassador’s residence so that blackmail and coercion were possible.”
Pons further argued that a video released by the Maduro regime would confirm that the Sánchez government was a “necessary collaborator” in helping Chavismo “decapitate the democratic opposition in Venezuela.”
The secretary also reaffirmed criticisms that the PP had made last week regarding alleged mediation by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former president of the Spanish government (2004-2011) and a fellow party member of Sánchez, for González’s departure.
“Behind everything that is happening, we must make it clear that there is also José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who remains silent, without saying anything, without making any statement. He has compromised the government with this operation,” said Pons, who called the former president a “great conspirator.”
On Wednesday (18), González had said that he was threatened by the president of the National Assembly (AN) of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, and by the vice president of the Maduro regime, Delcy Rodríguez, to sign a document recognizing a decision by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) that ratified the “victory” of the Chavista dictator in the July 28 election.
In the video in which he addressed the issue, however, González made no mention of any alleged coercion by the Spanish government to leave Venezuela.
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