( Spanish) – Venezuela’s post-election crisis had a new episode on Thursday, when the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, released audio recordings that he said prove that the majority opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, supposedly accepted the results of the July 28 presidential elections, in which President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner.
Hours later, González’s lawyer, José Vicente Haro, criticized the release of these recordings and considered that they were captured during what he described as “an ambush.”
Rodríguez led a press conference on Thursday afternoon, moments after the National Assembly approved an agreement to repudiate the decision of the European Parliament to recognize González Urrutia as president-elect of Venezuela. During that appearance before journalists, the deputy —one of the men closest to President Nicolás Maduro— showed a series of audios of the meeting that he and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez held this month with González and another unidentified person at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas.
The recordings, which cannot be heard clearly, were presented as video clips that included a photo of Gonzalez, a letter and subtitles.
Rodríguez said that these audios show that González agreed to sign a document in which he recognizes Maduro as the winner of the elections. He also said that they prove that González was not coerced, contrary to what the candidate of the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) said on Wednesday in a video published on his social networks.
One of the recordings reproduces a dialogue that, according to Rodríguez, took place between González and the unidentified person, and in which, supposedly, González accepts that he will not seek to lead a government in exile or be a “plastic” president from abroad.
This is the transcript:
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It is in the country’s interest, and I believe Edmundo thinks the same, the central issue and not an invention of demanding a president made of plastic or paper, just a piece of paper.
EDMUNDO GONZALEZ: Yes, I agree.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That is clear and Edmundo is very clear. He and all his troops. And well, the guarantee is that the one who commands is at the top, and if you do not listen, he will pull you by the ear. Then there is the issue of respecting the Public Powers, that is not even discussed. There are ways of saying it. There are ways of expressing it with… We can try something.
EDMUNDO GONZALEZ: I want to go to sleep with that issue resolved.
Rodriguez insisted that these recordings show that Gonzalez agreed to recognize Maduro’s victory and added that if Gonzalez persists in denying it, he will reveal another document.
“I have the document in my possession, do not force me to publish it, because I am willing to do so. In this document, Mr. González Urrutia asks for his property, that his property and the property of his family be respected, that his home be respected, and that the residences and property of his children, family members and friends be respected,” he said.
On Thursday night, in an interview with Fernando Del Rincón for ‘s “Conclusions” program, attorney José Vicente Haro insisted, as he had done in previous days, that his client did not accept the results and only signed the document that was given to him because he feared for his safety and that he would not be allowed to leave for Spain, the country in which he requested asylum.
“He was forced to sign,” Haro said, stressing that the audio recordings were made without his client’s consent.
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“What we saw today was a confirmation of what happened yesterday and more threats, more threats to continue revealing documents, we don’t know which documents (Rodríguez) is referring to, we don’t know which documents he is referring to. Audio recordings that are difficult to even listen to, difficult to understand, and that you can see were taken from under someone’s suit. In short, something that is dark, that is hidden, that is totally an ambush that has unfortunately been set for Mr. Edmundo González Urrutia,” he argued.
The release of these recordings occurs when two months have passed since the presidential elections in Venezuela, in which both the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) declared Maduro the winner of the elections. However, the electoral records broken down by voting table have not yet been published.
Meanwhile, several countries and international organizations are questioning these results and pointing out that there are elements that point to González being the real winner.
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