Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called on Venezuelans on Thursday to remain “firm, organized and mobilized” after the triumph which, he said, was won by candidate Edmundo González Urrutia in Sunday’s presidential elections and he ratified his commitment to “cash in” for the victory.
“With the pride of having achieved a historic victory on July 28 and the awareness that, to collect, we will also go all the way,” he said in a video posted on his social networks.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of Sunday’s elections, but the opposition claims to have all the records that it claims would confirm González Urrutia’s victory.
The Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) summoned the presidential candidates to appear this Friday to begin a process of certification of the results, after a resource introduced by Maduro.
The Carter Center, which deployed a technical mission for the elections, assured the agency on Wednesday AP that “it is not an independent evaluation.” He also assured that it is not necessary to resort to the TSJ, which organizations accuse of not being impartial to the Executive Branch, but rather to demand transparency from the electoral body.
Machado, who in an article of his authorship published by the newspaper Wall Street Journal She said she is “protected” and fearing for her life, she called on Venezuelans to meet “with family” in all cities of the country this Saturday at 10:00 am
“We are going to pay tribute to each of those heroes who asserted and defended the will of the Venezuelan people on July 28 and who are now being persecuted by the regime, because we are going to assert the truth and because the world is going to see the strength and determination of a society determined to live in freedom,” he stressed.
Machado, a 56-year-old engineer and former parliamentarian who won the opposition presidential primary but is barred from holding public office, also called on citizens to raise Venezuelan flags in their homes.
The opposition leader claims that Maduro lost the presidential election 67% to 30% and that she has the proof.
Several countries have expressed concern about the situation in Venezuela, where protests broke out against the results that declared Maduro the winner, and have called on the electoral authorities to publicly publish the data from the vote counts broken down by voting table.
According to independent organisations, at least 17 people died in the context of the demonstrations between Monday and Wednesday.
Maduro said Thursday that at least 1,200 people have been arrested for participating in protests that led to acts of vandalism. Relatives of many of those arrested have gone to police stations seeking information about their whereabouts and denouncing the situation as arbitrary.
This week, the president, who has deepened accusations against the opposition and said that both Machado and Gonzalez should be arrested, urged people to report those who participated in violent demonstrations through a government application.
The Venezuelan government has also denounced that a coup forged by the opposition with the support of several countries.
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