Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros said on Monday that he personally led the process of Edmundo González leaving for Madrid as a political asylum seeker. “I may have many defects, but one of the values I cultivate is to keep my word. I have personally led this process. I keep my word to comply with agreements and keep the secrets that must be kept, which are state secrets. Everything was done impeccably,” he said during a conversation on his television program, while eating a papaya candy.
As he has done before, he used González Urrutia’s age to compare him to US President Joe Biden, who declined to continue with his candidacy due to health issues. He acknowledged that he has faced him harshly during the last month, calling him a criminal, a decrepit old man, a coward, and threatening him with prison. Now, the tone has changed. “We have played fair and square, we have won. The country’s peace has won and that is why we are calm. I understand the step that Ambassador González Urrutia has taken and I respect it, as I said when Biden stepped aside,” said the president. “I hope he does well in his new life. His wishes for peace and harmony for the country will be fulfilled.”
Chavismo has turned Edmundo’s exile into a narrative about the division of the opposition and supposed differences between González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, leader of the coalition that promoted the former’s campaign. “The opposition has no leadership, the opposition voters feel disappointed because this lady (Machado) is going for fascism and sanctions. The opposition has to reorient itself and reorganize itself so that they believe in the electoral and democratic path. If not, they will simply be forgotten by history.”
For his part, prosecutor Tarek William Saab announced that the case against González will be closed after his exile. “We, along with José Vicente Haro (Edmundo González’s lawyer), in the next few hours or days, will establish the manner, time and place of how this case will be closed judicially, in the terms of the conversation and the Constitution and Venezuelan laws establish,” said Saab in an interview with CNN.
A week ago, the prosecutor had issued an arrest warrant against him, which ended up legally surrounding the opposition figure. González Urrutia had refused to attend the three summonses of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to testify in an investigation in which he was accused of usurpation of functions, conspiracy, falsification of documents and disobedience to authority, among other crimes, for the publication on the website Results with Venezuela of the 83.5% of the official voting records collected by his witnesses on July 28, which support his victory with more than 30 points of difference and accuse the National Electoral Council of committing fraud to re-elect Maduro for a third term.
González Urrutia claimed the lack of independence of the powers in Venezuela, under the iron control of Nicolás Maduro. With that argument, he also did not appear at the hearings before the Supreme Court of Justice that carried out a supposed expert appraisal of the electoral results to validate the victory -even without final and disaggregated results- of the leader of Chavismo. In a last resort, the 75-year-old diplomat sent his lawyer to deliver a communication signed by him in which he insisted that the accusations against him had no basis.
But prosecutor Tarek William Saab, during a statement in which he responded to González Urrutia’s letter, even increased his accusations against the opposition leader and accused him of being responsible for the damage, deaths and injuries that occurred during the repression of the protests on July 29 and 30 against the results announced by the electoral authorities. For the official, González had called for the authorities to ignore the results and the publication of the minutes and that had unleashed chaos in the country. For this reason, that Thursday he ratified the arrest warrant against the opposition leader. That same day, according to the versions that have come to light, Urrutia left the Netherlands embassy, where he had been a guest for more than a month, for the Spanish embassy to finalize his departure from the country as a political asylum seeker. According to Saab, he requested the safe conduct to travel directly from his office.
Faced with the judicial blockade imposed on the opposition presidential candidate for the publication of the minutes, Machado responded by saying that she assumed responsibility for this decision in light of the omission of the National Electoral Council, which more than a month later has still not presented the results. The Public Prosecutor’s Office defined the publication of the minutes as a crime, despite the fact that the ruling PSUV has done so in other elections. On Sunday, once the opposition candidate’s departure from exile in Madrid was confirmed, Saab gave a press conference to express his “absolute respect” for the Executive’s decision to allow the person he had ordered to be captured to leave the country.
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