Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado is seeking to convince opposition supporters that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia is the president-elect of the South American country.
This, despite his fleeing to Spain over the weekend due to increasing tensions over the disputed presidential election.
Machado said in an online appearance Monday that the opposition is still hopeful that Gonzalez will take the oath of office on Jan. 10, replacing Venezuela’s incumbent authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, who claims he won the July 28 election.
“We all know that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia is the elected president of Venezuela … whether he is in Venezuela or anywhere else in the world,” Machado said.
She said that Gonzalez could carry out his presidential responsibilities from abroad “with much greater protection and security” but did not explain how he could lead Venezuela while residing on another continent.
Gonzalez, 75, and his wife arrived at a Spanish military airport near Madrid late Sunday. He had been in hiding since the election and had ignored several summonses from prosecutors.
“I have taken this decision thinking of Venezuela and that our destiny as a country cannot, must not, be that of a conflict of pain and suffering,” Gonzalez posted on the X social media platform.
Both Gonzalez and Maduro claim Gonzalez won the July poll. The country’s top court, stacked with Maduro loyalists, backed his claim to a third six-year term.
Venezuela’s election authority declared Maduro the winner of the election just hours after the polls closed but did not publish any results.
The opposition, however, claimed Gonzalez won a landslide victory, publishing voting tallies that it said were from 80% of the country’s 30,000 voting booths, showing that Gonzalez won by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.
At least 27 people have been killed and almost 200 people have been injured in post-election violence in Venezuela.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse
