Image copyright REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
Caption: Edmundo González was the opposition candidate in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election. (Photo: June 19)Article information
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- Title by the author, BBC News World
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September 8, 2024
Edmundo González, the opposition candidate in the elections of July 28 in Venezuela, left his country on Saturday night and arrived in Spain on Sunday, where he was granted political asylum.
“My departure from Caracas was surrounded by episodes of pressure, coercion and threats,” Gonzalez said in an audio message that the Democratic Unitary Platform released to the media and that the BBC could not independently verify.
“I trust that we will soon continue the fight to achieve freedom and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” the opposition leader added in the recording on Sunday, after his arrival in Spain.
On Saturday, via her Instagram account, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez reported that the opposition leader had left the South American nation.
The statement said Gonzalez had been seeking refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas for several days and had requested political asylum.
“Venezuela has granted the necessary safe-conducts for the sake of the country’s tranquility and political peace,” said the statement published by Rodríguez.
“This conduct reaffirms the respect for the law that has prevailed in the actions of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the international community.”
Earlier, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares had confirmed the news through his X account.
“Edmundo González, at his own request, is flying to Spain on a Spanish Air Force plane,” he wrote.
He added that the Spanish government “is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans.”
Image source, Reuters
Caption: Carolina González, daughter of Edmundo González, with her father in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, this Sunday, September 8.
On Sunday, Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab reported the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s “absolute respect” for Nicolás Maduro’s decision to grant safe conduct and stressed that Spain and Venezuela “agreed” on this measure.
“This Public Prosecutor’s Office expresses its absolute respect for the decisions of the Venezuelan Executive in order to comply with the right to asylum, guaranteed by the Constitution,” said the prosecutor.
Gonzalez’s lawyer, Jose Vicente Haro, said in an interview with CNN that the presidential candidate had been “subjected to constant harassment, threats against his life, his physical integrity, his freedom and his personal safety” over the past three weeks in Venezuela.
He also contradicted Saab’s claim that the opposition candidate was “a victim of pressure from his party that forced him to make decisions.”
“A sad day”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who described Gonzalez as “an undisputed voice for peace,” called the opposition leader’s departure from Venezuela “a direct result of the anti-democratic measures that Nicolas Maduro has unleashed against the Venezuelan people.”
“The election results and the will of the people cannot simply be swept aside by Maduro and the Venezuelan electoral authorities,” he added.
For his part, the European Union’s representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, said in a statement that “today is a sad day for democracy in Venezuela.”
“In a democracy, no political leader should be forced to seek asylum in another country.
“Faced with repression, political persecution and direct threats to his safety and freedom, after having received hospitality at the residence of the Netherlands in Caracas until September 5, the political leader and presidential candidate Edmundo González has had to request political asylum and avail himself of the protection offered to him by Spain.”
The official also called on Venezuelan authorities to “release all political prisoners.”
Image copyright REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
Caption: In this July 30 photo, Gonzalez is seen at a public event in Caracas alongside Maria Corina Machado.
Maria Corina Machado, leader of the Venezuelan opposition, said in a message on X that Gonzalez is in Spain.
She denounced that after the elections of August 28, “the regime unleashed a brutal wave of repression” and that the life of González, whom she calls “president-elect,” “was in danger, and the increasing threats, summons, arrest warrants and even attempts at blackmail and coercion to which he has been subjected, demonstrate that the regime has no scruples or limits in its obsession with silencing him and trying to subdue him.”
He said that Gonzalez “will fight from the outside.”
Juan Pablo Guanipa, leader of Primero Justicia, a Venezuelan opposition party, said on his X account that “no matter where González is,” “we have to continue fighting so that the victory that the candidate claims he obtained is respected.”
“The important thing is that he was elected, that his choice was proven and that popular sovereignty must be respected.”
Arrest warrant
González represented the Venezuelan opposition in the presidential elections, after Machado was disqualified from running.
According to the minutes published by the opposition after the elections, González won by a large majority.
The National Electoral Council, however, declared Nicolás Maduro the winner, a result that has been questioned internationally since the minutes confirming it have not been published.
Image copyright REUTERS/Maxwell Briceño
Photo caption: After the election, many Venezuelans took to the streets in their country and abroad to express their support for Gonzalez. This photo is from a demonstration in Caracas on August 8.
On August 22, the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela validated the results that gave Maduro the victory.
And on Monday, September 2, a Venezuelan judge ordered the arrest of Edmundo González for alleged “usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobedience of laws, conspiracy, sabotage of systems and crimes of association.”
The former candidate did not appear before the court, despite successive summonses, and had remained in hiding since July 30.
Post-election violence in Venezuela has claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 injured.
Nicolas Maduro’s government has arrested more than 2,400 people since the election, which the UN says has created “a climate of fear.”
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has appeared at public events since the election and has said she has no intention of leaving the country.
From diplomacy to politics
Following the disqualification of Machado, as well as Corina Yoris, whom he had appointed as his substitute, González was chosen to face Maduro at the polls.
When he announced his candidacy in April, he said it was a responsibility he accepted “with humility.”
“It’s an unexpected situation. I never thought I would be in this position. However, when they suggested it to me, I took it as a personal commitment to Venezuela, to the system of government and to democracy,” he told BBC Mundo in an interview published on June 13.
“We have to seek national reconciliation and if that includes sectors that are currently with the government, then we will include them,” he added.
At the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) he became an internationalist and later studied a master’s degree in International Relations at the American University.
His first assignment was as secretary of the Venezuelan embassy in the United States, in 1978, at the age of 29. He then went to El Salvador during the civil war that ravaged that Central American country more than four decades ago.
At the end of 1999 he received his credentials as ambassador of the government of Rafael Caldera and, some time later, he was ratified by Hugo Chávez, under whose government he worked as ambassador of Argentina until 2002.
He served as a diplomat in various Venezuelan delegations in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Algeria.
Between 2013 and 2015, he was the international representative of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), the opposition coalition that mutated into what is now known as the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).
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