Valeria Ordonez Ghio
(CNN Español) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Friday that some “manipulated” his statements in which he warned of a possible “bloodbath” in Venezuela if he did not win the July 28 elections.
During a press conference in which he answered a few questions at the end – the second appearance before the media in less than a week, something unusual for the president – Maduro said that with that expression he meant that the opposition is not ready to govern and that, if it won, it could have carried out violent acts.
Maduro warned of a “bloodbath” in Venezuela if he does not win the elections
“That is why I said that time, and they manipulated it greatly, I said: if those people were to take political power in Venezuela, there would be a bloodbath, and they manipulated it. You saw how they manipulated my expression. We avoided a bloodbath with our victory, but also with popular, military, and police action, the perfect civic, military, and police union, because they wanted to put thousands of Venezuelans to the knife and shoot them to death on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday,” he said.
On July 16, during a campaign rally, Maduro declared: “The destiny of Venezuela in the 21st century depends on our victory on July 28. If we do not want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, the product of the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success, the greatest victory in the electoral history of our people.”
The statement sparked a variety of reactions inside and outside Venezuela. Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva said days later that he was frightened by the words.
This week, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, said that Maduro “is complying” with the “bloodbath” in Venezuela, referring to the people who have died during the post-election protests, which have occurred after the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared the president the winner on Sunday. The opposition rejects these results and claims that the winner was its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
So far, there is no official death toll from the protests. Venezuela’s Attorney General’s Office has not responded to CNN’s requests for comment, and civil society organizations have different statistics. The non-governmental organization Foro Penal has a record of 11 deaths, while Human Rights Watch says it has received “credible reports” of 20 deaths.
Maduro has dismissed the criticism against him and defended the results of the CNE, which on Friday published new figures in which it maintains Maduro’s supposed victory, although so far it has still not published the minutes with the results from the voting tables.
In this context, almost a week after the elections were held, both the government and the opposition are preparing demonstrations this Saturday in Caracas and other cities in Venezuela. On the one hand, the sectors that support Maduro will celebrate the victory awarded to him by the CNE. On the other hand, the majority opposition led by María Corina Machado will demand that the voting records be published and that their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, be declared the winner.
