The Venezuelan opposition leader who is credited with the electoral victory, Edmundo González Urrutia, assured that the ruler Nicolás Maduro carried out a “coup d’état”, and ordered the military high command to “disregard illegal orders.”
“As commander in chief, I order the military high command to ignore illegal orders given to them by those who confiscate power and to prepare my security conditions to assume the position of president of the Republic that entrusted me with popular sovereignty.
The soldiers of our National Armed Forces are part of the same people and to whom they owe obedience through me,” he said in a message recorded and published on social networks.
“To the military and police forces I order the cessation of repression, to the national institutions I tell them, for the peace of the Republic, they must ignore the illegitimate regime,” he continued in the four and a half minute video.
However, hours before, after his inauguration for a third term, Maduro participated in an event in which the security forces swore loyalty to him.
González Urrutia insisted that he continues to work on the conditions to re-enter his country and assume the position of president.
“Soon, very soon, no matter what they do, we will be able to enter Venezuela and put an end to this tragedy. “I am very close to Venezuela, I am ready for safe entry at the right time,” said González Urrutia.
The retired ambassador, 75, said that they are coordinating “all the essential factors” to guarantee the “soon return to freedom.”
“The decision to close the country’s borders and artillery the military planes that guard the airspace, sought to do with me in the air what they did yesterday against our leader,” in reference to the capture and subsequent release of María Corina Machado, after leaving of a mobilization that he called in Caracas.
Both Maduro and González Urrutia, recognized as president-elect by several governments, claim victory in the presidential elections on July 28.
Despite the insistence of the international community that requested transparent and verifiable results, the electoral body did not disclose disaggregated data, but the opposition published minutes that its table witnesses kept.
González Urrutia, in exile since September, carried out a regional tour with him to seek political support and had expressed his intentions to return to the country this week to take office.
Venezuelan authorities have threatened to arrest him if he re-enters Venezuela.
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