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CARACAS (AP) — Opposition leader María Corina Machado and unity presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia on Monday asked Venezuela’s military and police to withdraw their support for President Nicolas Maduro and not to suppress protests sparked by the announcement that Maduro had won the presidential election on July 28.
After the election, González’s allies insisted the 74-year-old diplomat won by a landslide, while the ruling party claimed Maduro had prevailed, raising tensions in the politically divided South American country.
A day after the election, the National Electoral Council (CNE) officially declared Maduro the winner, but has yet to release the vote count that would confirm his victory. Meanwhile, Maduro announced that the government had arrested 2,000 opponents and warned that more would be detained; the attorney general put the number of detainees at 1,062.
“We know that all components of the National Armed Forces (FAN) have decided not to repress citizens who are peacefully demanding their rights and their victory. “We Venezuelans are not enemies of the FAN,” González and Machado said in a joint statement, in which they reiterated their accusations of electoral fraud as they said they had “irrefutable evidence” of their victory. This was the case despite electoral authorities declaring Maduro the winner.
“We call on you to stop the actions of groups organized by the Maduro leadership, composed of military and police squads and armed groups outside the state, which carry out beatings, torture and murders under the protection of the evil forces they represent. You can and must stop these actions immediately,” they asked in the statement.
In the document, González and Machado also urged the military to “prevent the regime’s brutality against the people and respect and implement the results of the July 28 elections.”
Maduro enjoys the loyalty of the armed forces, the traditional arbitrator of political disputes in Venezuela.
Machado and González also condemned that in order to prevent protests, the Maduro government has launched a “brutal offensive against democratic leaders, witnesses (political parties at the voting booth) and even ordinary citizens, with the absurd aim of hiding the truth.”
“The (military) high command is allied with Maduro and his sinister interests in relation to this massive violation of human rights,” the letter states.
Venezuela is in the grip of a post-election crisis, with mass mobilizations taking to the streets as followers of the ruling party defend Maduro’s third term in office, while the opposition coalition and its voters claim that Edmundo González – the Unitarian candidate – was considered the winner of the election.
“The new government of the Republic, democratically elected by the Venezuelan people, provides guarantees for those who fulfill their constitutional obligations,” the opposition leader stressed.
The latest results released by the CNE on Friday showed that Maduro received 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez received 5.3 million votes, based on 96.87% of the minutes.
Instead, the opposition released records from about 80 percent of polling stations, claiming they supported González.
An Associated Press analysis of nearly 24,000 election record images, representing results from 79% of voting machines, showed Gonzalez received 6.89 million votes, nearly 500,000 more than electoral authorities said Maduro received.
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