Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro said that Edmundo González Urrutia, who was the presidential candidate for the largest opposition coalition in the July 28 elections and who is the target of an arrest warrant issued on Monday (2), “wants to be above the law”.
The statement was made on Monday, in parallel with the publication of the arrest warrant issued by a Chavista court of first instance that judges crimes related to terrorism.
González is accused of the crimes of “usurpation of functions”, “falsification of public documents”, “incitement to disobey the laws”, “conspiracy”, “sabotage of damage to systems and association [para cometer um crime]”.
“He wants to be above the law […] This coward González Urrutia has the nerve to say that he does not recognize the laws, that he does not recognize anything, this is unacceptable,” alleged Maduro during his weekly television program.
Although the Venezuelan dictator did not refer to the arrest warrant, he reiterated that the opponent is “hiding”, in reference to González’s decision to remain “under cover” due to the repeated threats of arrest he suffered after the elections for not recognizing the official result that was manipulated to give victory to Maduro.
The Venezuelan Public Prosecutor’s Office, controlled by the Maduro regime, asked the country’s Justice Department, which is also controlled by Chavismo, to issue an arrest warrant for González, who decided, in order to preserve his safety, not to appear at “three summonses” to testify as part of an investigation in which he is one of the targets for simply stating that the last presidential election was fraudulent.
The investigation is related to the release by the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), for which González ran in the election, of 83.5% of the voting records collected by witnesses and members of polling stations that proved the victory by a wide margin of the opponent and the fraud of Chavismo, which to date has not released any document that proves the official result.
The PUD released these records, which Maduro classified, without evidence, as “false”, after the Chavista National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed the Chavista dictator as the “winner” of the elections, a result that was not only questioned by the opposition, but by several democratic countries around the world, some of which support and recognize that González was the real winner, such as the United States.
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