Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been trying for over a month to make Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia the number one public enemy of Chavismo. On Monday, the government-controlled prosecutor’s office made good on its threats and ordered the arrest of the opposition candidate. The public prosecutor’s office accuses him of five crimes: usurpation of functions, falsification of public documents, incitement to disobedience, conspiracy and sabotage. Formally, the prosecutor has opened an investigation against the veteran diplomat for publishing on a website the minutes collected by opposition witnesses during the elections of July 28. These ballots contradict the official version, which attributes the victory to the current president and instead grants a resounding victory to his main rival. To top off the double standards and arbitrariness, the ruling political party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), did the same thing in 2013 for which it is now pursuing its rival: publishing the ballots in the middle of the race for the vote with Henrique Capriles.
Today, Maduro remains entrenched in power while González Urrutia lives in hiding to avoid the arrest warrant against him. Chavismo intends to resolve the electoral dispute in this way, redoubling repression and trying to corner its opposition. The candidate from the coalition of forces led by María Corina Machado, who was unable to stand in the elections because she is disqualified, has ignored the summons of the Attorney General’s Office on three occasions. He alleges a lack of independence of the public powers and that the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, acts as a political operator for the president, who went so far as to suggest that the persecuted candidate was preparing to flee.
This is a reprehensible strategy used on multiple occasions by the government apparatus. That is, intensifying the judicial and political harassment of adversaries to force an escape, as ended up happening with the opposition Juan Guaidó. González Urrutia’s defense team assures, however, that he does not plan to leave the country or ask for asylum in an embassy. The first reactions of the international community have been of unqualified condemnation of this persecution, while Machado accuses the Chavista leadership of “having lost all sense of reality.”
Suspicions of fraud have not only come from the opposition, but have also been encouraged by one of the few independent organizations that participated as an observer in the elections, the Carter Center, and by the head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), who was dismissed after his complaint. However, Chavismo refuses to show the minutes to prove its victory while it tightens its repression.
The signals coming from Miraflores Palace do not suggest, for the moment, any concession. Faced with internal and external pressure, Chavismo has strengthened its hard core. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has assumed control of oil, the country’s main economic engine, and the inflexible and veteran leader Diosdado Cabello will control the police forces from the Ministry of the Interior and Justice. In the midst of the crisis, Maduro is trying to divert attention by decreeing “the advancement of Christmas to October 1st.” An absurd way of getting around the social and political emergency that Venezuela is experiencing due to its inability to present evidence that refutes electoral fraud.
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