Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Thursday took responsibility for the records kept by polling station witnesses in the July 28 election, which led to an arrest warrant being issued against former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
“I am proud to be part of this powerful movement that made this extraordinary civic and technological operation possible and I assume responsibility for the minutes because they are legal, legitimate and express the popular sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” he wrote in X.
Machado, winner of the opposition presidential primary but disqualified from holding public office, confirmed that González Urrutia is the president-elect of Venezuela and insisted that citizens in the military and police “have a constitutional duty to fulfill.”
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab on Thursday ratified the arrest warrant against González Urrutia, who on Wednesday sent a letter in which he explained the reasons why he did not attend the summons of the Public Ministry (MP) for the investigation following the publication of the copies of the minutes.
Saab said that the letter submitted by José Vicente Haro, González Urrutia’s lawyer, who has denounced violations of due process and the presumption of innocence, is an “aggravating factor.”
“The letter was written by the person who did you harm, it becomes an aggravating factor in your legal situation, since in it, as I said, he declares himself as a judge and takes justice into his own hands and finally rules that you are innocent (…) the most serious thing is that he says that he will continue to be in contempt. Well, José Vicente Haro said that he was going to do the necessary steps to convince you to appear,” said the prosecutor in a press conference.
In the letter, the 75-year-old retired ambassador said that the coalition of opposition parties clarified that the digitalization, safekeeping and publication of the copies of the voting records was not its responsibility.
He also ruled out the possibility that the functions of the National Electoral Council (CNE) were being usurped, since the regulations include the delivery of copies of the voting records to witnesses as one of its guarantees of reliability.
He also clarified that his failure to appear was not due to a lack of knowledge of the jurisdictional institutionality provided for in the Constitution, but rather to his “conviction of the lack of foundation” of the summons.
At the request of the MP, a court issued an arrest warrant on Monday against the 75-year-old retired ambassador for the alleged commission of the crimes of “usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobedience of laws, conspiracy, sabotage to damage systems and association.”
González Urrutia, who has denounced the lack of guarantees by the judiciary, considered an arm of the executive branch, last participated in a public event on July 30, two days after the elections, and since then has limited his appearances to videos on social media.
The CNE declared Nicolás Maduro the winner for a third term, but more than a month after the election, it has not released the detailed results, which has been questioned by dozens of countries that are calling for an independent verification of the results, amid allegations of fraud by the opposition, which claims that González Urrutia won with 67% of the votes.
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