Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said Sunday that Saturday’s worldwide demonstration in defense of the widely considered victory of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, standard-bearer of the largest anti-Chavez coalition, marked “a fundamental milestone” and “a great victory” for the “fight” against the official result of the presidential election, which declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner.
“We have shown that Venezuela is united as a nation. There is no distance or time that can separate us. We have shown that the freedom of Venezuela is a global cause,” Machado said on the social network X (Twitter). “Every day our strength increases. We have achieved another objective of our strategy. New steps and new victories are coming,” the politician added.
Machado also acknowledged that “citizens from all over the world” have assumed the “significance” of the anti-Chavez “struggle,” after demonstrations were held in more than 350 cities on “five continents,” where Venezuelans demanded respect for González Urrutia’s “victory,” the release of those considered political prisoners, and the publication of the electoral records.
From the crowd
Opposition protests outside Venezuela were particularly numerous in cities such as Santiago de Chile, Madrid, Buenos Aires and Miami, while smaller groups gathered in different parts of the world, even at the North Pole. In Caracas, meanwhile, the sight of Machado emerging from the crowd, protected by a hooded jacket, to climb onto the truck where the speeches were being held, known as Edmundomóvil, gave the demonstrators a boost of enthusiasm.
The opposition activist temporarily left hiding, forced to do so because she felt her life was threatened following an arrest warrant issued by the authorities, specifically for participating in the protest. Once the demonstration was over, the Chavista authorities “expropriated” the truck used for the speeches.
Twenty-one days before the presidential elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has not published the disaggregated results, as required by law, nor the electoral records, while the opposition published on a website “83.5 percent” of these documents that – they insist – prove González Urrutia’s victory. These records have been validated by experts from the UN and the Carter Center, while the Government claims that they are false documents.
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