presidential candidate Enrique Márquez defends decision not to sign electoral agreement

Opposition presidential candidate Enrique Márquez said this Friday that he did not sign the agreement to recognize the results of the July 28 elections in Venezuela because he considered it “non-legal, unilateral, without consultation and useless” and assures that there are no legal costs for not having one. subscribed.

“There is no legal cost that can be attributed to my refusal to sign (…) I do not see any legal sanction that could be imposed on me for not signing it. Now, we are clear that the law, there is a sector of the country that governs, that is used to bending it to take its toll,” he said at a press conference.

“It is not written in the Constitution or the Law that the CNE can force a candidate to sign a document. No, I am committed to respecting the Constitution and I have respected it,” he continued.

The document, which also establishes the commitment to recognize that the electoral body has complied with the electoral guarantees, which has been questioned by various sectors of Venezuelan civil society, was signed by eight of the 10 presidential candidates.

The opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia ruled out signing, ensuring that it is “redundant” and that it is contemplated in the Barbados Agreement that he claims the government has violated.

Márquez questioned that the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, has stated that the fact that he has refused to sign indicates that they are seeking to “destabilize and sabotage” the electoral process.

“We are in democracy, as long as I do not violate the Constitution or the Law, my citizen and patriotic conscience is absolutely clean,” responded the candidate who insisted to the government discuss the proposal of the president of Colombia Gustavo Petro to consult Venezuelans on election day about a democratic governance pact.

The proposal for the agreement to recognize the results was presented by the head of the ruling party’s campaign command, Jorge Rodríguez, who has accused the opposition of seeking to install a matrix of electoral “fraud” in the elections with the aim of promoting violence.

The opposition led by María Corina Machado, winner of the presidential primary, but disqualified from holding public office, which supports Edmundo González, insists, however, that it will remain on the electoral route to achieve a transition in the country and from the beginning this year has denounced a systematic wave of persecution and intimidation.

So far this year, at least 37 political leaders and social leaders have been arrested and accused of organizing alleged destabilizing plans in the country.

Several governments, including Brazil, have reiterated the importance of the elections in Venezuela having a “large presence of international observers,” and have ratified their support for the agreement on electoral guarantees that the government and the opposition’s Democratic Unitary Platform They signed in Barbados.

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