The Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office summoned opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia to testify again on Tuesday, in a second summons after failing to appear on Monday to a first call in the midst of a criminal investigation against him for reporting fraud in the July 28 presidential election.
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González, who has been in hiding for three weeks, claims victory. The claim, however, hits an institutional wall, accused of serving the re-elected president Nicolás Maduro.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Maduro the winner with 52% of the votes, although without publishing the details of the result, and this in turn was validated by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).
The prosecutor’s office is investigating the opposition leader for alleged “usurpation of functions” and “forgery of public documents.” These crimes can theoretically carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
“Please appear (…) on August 27 at 10:00 a.m. in order to give an interview in relation to the facts that this office is investigating, related to the publication and maintenance” of a website, in which the anti-Chavez supporters claim to have uploaded “83.5% of the electoral records” to support their claim of fraud in the presidential elections of July 28.
Gonzalez, 74, is not expected to appear this time either. On Sunday, he called Attorney General Tarek William Saab a “political accuser” and He considered that this was “a summons without guarantees of independence and due process.”
In his opinion, the Attorney General “is condemning in advance and is now pushing for a summons without guarantees of independence and due process.”
In his message, the former ambassador urged Maduro to “understand, for once, that the solution is not in repression, but in the international, independent and reliable verification of the records, which cannot be replaced by a sentence issued outside the Constitution,” in reference to the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ruling that validated the reelection of the Chavista.
The first summons was sent on Saturday and, like the second, does not specify the capacity in which he was summoned: defendant, witness or expert. according to Venezuelan law. It speaks of “giving an interview in relation to the facts that this office is investigating.”
This is a totally irregular citation and is designed precisely to try to make you make a mistake.
“This is a totally irregular summons and is designed precisely to try to make a mistake,” he explained to the AFP Zair Mundaray, former Venezuelan prosecutor: “We are faced with an obvious political persecution scheme that is not formal.”
González last appeared in public two days after the election, at an opposition rally in Caracas. Since then, he has limited himself to making statements via the Internet.
Maduro called him a “coward,” while Saab blamed him and opposition leader María Corina Machado for acts of violence in post-election protests that left 27 dead – two of them soldiers -, almost 200 injured and more than 2,400 arrested.
“There are no more pardons,” said the powerful Chavista leader Diosdado Cabello. “Anyone who attacks institutions must assume responsibility.”
Machado, for his part, called for protests this Wednesday. “A record kills a sentence!” he posted on social media in relation to the copies of more than 80% of the voting records that they have published on a website, also a target of Saab’s investigation.
The independence of the CNE and the TSJ is also being questioned by a UN mission assessing the human rights situation in Venezuela. The United States, 10 Latin American countries and the head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, rejected the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In contrast, the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) – created 20 years ago by the late socialist leaders Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro – expressed their support for Maduro.
In efforts for a negotiation between Maduro and the opposition, In a joint statement, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro insisted that “disaggregated and verifiable” results must be published.
Lula and Petro had proposed a new election, an idea rejected by both parties.
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