CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado sought to reassure her supporters Monday that her coalition still hopes to gain control of the presidency despite the departure of their candidate into exile. Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Machado’s group claims it has evidence that Gonzalez won the July 28 presidential election by a large margin over Venezuela’s authoritarian incumbent President Nicolás Maduro, despite Maduro claiming victory.
Machado told an online meeting with opposition leaders, reporters and others on Monday that her group still hopes Maduro will step down in January, even though those expectations appear to be fading for voters since González decided to go into exile in Spain last weekend.
She said the former diplomat could take on the role of opposition candidate “with much more protection and security” from abroad. She herself has gone into hiding in the weeks since the election as Maduro’s government has arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations across the country protesting the election results.
“Nothing has changed,” she insisted from an undisclosed location in Venezuela.
González, 75, landed at a military airport near Madrid on Sunday, accompanied by his wife and Spanish officials. His departure was announced Saturday night by the Venezuelan government, which days earlier ordered his arrest.
González had not been seen in public since the week after the vote, when he and Machado not only announced that their campaign had ended obtained voting results from more than two-thirds of electronic voting machines that they had been used in the elections, but also that they had been published online to show the world that Maduro had lost the elections.
Their claims stunned supporters and opponents alike, as the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner hours after polls closed, giving him a third six-year term on January 10. The commission, made up of loyal supporters of the ruling party, has never released detailed vote tallies to back up Maduro’s claim to victory.
González had never run for office before the presidential election. The leadership of the opposition coalition Unitary Platform chose him as its candidate after the government banned Machado from running and did not allow her hand-picked successor to register for the race.
Machado became his chief deputy and they campaigned together.
González said in a statement Monday that he is not driven by “personal ambition.” He wrote that he remains committed to “realizing the will of the people,” but he did not explain how he plans to continue pursuing that goal.
“My commitment is not based on personal ambition, this decision is a gesture that goes out to everyone and I hope it will be responded to as such,” said González.
Machado told reporters that González is “the elected president of Venezuela,” regardless of his location, and will remain so “until the day he is sworn in as president.” She did not provide details on the strategy that might lead to that outcome.
Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which observed the elections at the invitation of Maduro’s government, concluded that the results announced by election authorities were not credible.
In a statement criticizing the election, the UN experts declined to validate the opposition’s claim of victory, but said the faction’s voting results posted online appear to have all the original security features.
