Following the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro for a third presidential term in Venezuela this Friday, opposition leader María Corina Machado he said in a recorded message broadcast on Instagram: “Today Maduro has consolidated a coup d’état, violating the Constitution. Have no doubt, this is over.”
On the eve of the presidential inauguration, a tense march by the opposition ended with the report of a brief arrest of María Corina Machado, which the Government denied. The confusion lasted a few hours and her political team later said she had been freed. The opposition leader reappeared at the protest after more than four months of absence.
The largest opposition coalition claims the victory of its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, and has called the elections of July 28, 2024, in which it claims victory, fraudulent with partial copies of documents electoral today guarded in Panama. González Urrutia has the support of countries such as the United States and Argentina, which have recognized him as “president-elect,” while the European Union has failed to recognize Maduro’s victory. Reports from UN observers and the Carter Center have questioned the electoral result proclaimed by the Venezuelan electoral body, which has not published the electoral records that corroborate the result of the elections.
González Urrutia, who left Venezuela in September to settle in Spain and began a tour of America a few days ago to meet with allied leaders, had assured that this Friday he would arrive in Venezuela to take office as president-elect. The former ambassador repeatedly promised that he would return to the Caribbean country, but had not given details about how he would do so. At the moment, there is no news that the opposition leader is in Venezuela. Former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana, who had announced that he was going to accompany the opposition leader, assured the NTN24 channel this Friday that he is in the Dominican Republic.
The government, which has accused the opposition of fomenting plots against it, has said it will arrest González if he sets foot in the country. Both the opposition and organizations have denounced a wave of arrests in recent weeks. Among others, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) has demanded the “immediate release” of former presidential candidate Enrique Márquez, detained on Tuesday by state security agents. For its part, The Espacio Público organization warned that since Tuesday the whereabouts of its director, the defender of press freedom Carlos Correa, have been unknown.
This Friday, the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) has accused Maduro of carrying out a “coup d’état”, after the Parliament, controlled by Chavismo, swore him in as president for the period 2025-2031. “Today a new phase begins in the fight for democracy and freedom,” he says in a statement on X.
Maduro has defended his presidential inauguration as a “great Venezuelan victory.” “We have achieved what we knew we were going to achieve,” he said in his first speech after taking office. “The people of Venezuela defeated imperialism and its diplomacy of deception and now they do not know how to take revenge, the outgoing US government does not know how to take revenge on our people. “They couldn’t beat us.”
After the event in Parliament, Maduro attended a military parade in which representatives of the armed forces swore their “subordination, discipline, obedience and absolute loyalty to defend Venezuela from external enemies.”
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