Venezuelan opposition candidate Gonzalez leaves for Spain to evade imminent arrest
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González, who the United States and a host of other countries believe was the real winner of July’s presidential election, fled his country and was heading to Spain, where he was granted political asylum after the Nicolas Maduro regime issued orders to arrest him.
González left the country late Saturday on board a Spanish air force plane headed to the Dominican Republic, from which the opposition leader was expected to board another flight to Madrid.
According to press reports, regime officials allowed González to leave the country following a two week-long negotiation in which Maduro’s top lieutenants Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Rodríguez and former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero were involved.
“Spain insists that it was Edmundo himself who requested asylum, but other sources familiar with the conversations maintain that all this arose from a negotiation in which even the Rodríguez brothers, Delcy and Jorge, the political operators closest to President Nicolás Maduro, participated,” the Spanish daily El País reported Sunday morning.
Political leader María Corina Machado, the main leader of the Venezuelan opposition whose support was fundamental to González’s strong showing in the election, is still in the South American country. Machado, who has said that she has no plans of leaving Venezuela, said Sunday morning that González’s departure had become a necessity because “his life was in danger, and because of the increasing threats, summons, arrest warrants and even attempts at blackmail and coercion to which he has been subjected.
“This demonstrate that the regime has no scruples or limits in its obsession with silencing him,” Machado said through her X account “In the face of this brutal reality. It is necessary for our cause to preserve his freedom, his integrity and his life.”
The Venezuelan judiciary, which has often been described by the United Nations and other international organizations as a persecution tool subservient to Maduro, claims that González and Machado have been conspiring against the government by forging the election tallies backing their claim that Maduro lost the election to González.
Machado and Gonzalez had been in hiding for some time, suspecting that the regime would eventually move to arrest them alongside the close to 2,000 people Maduro had already detained as part of the latest wave of repression.
Before boarding the plane out of Venezuela, González was staying at the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas. The siege that Maduro’s security forces had imposed on the Argentine embassy, where other key members of Machado’s political party have been seeking refuge, was a clear sign for González that there was no safe place remaining for him in Venezuela, El Pais reported.
Delcy Rodríguez’s, who is Maduro’s Vice President, commented on Instagram late Saturday night that the regime decided to allow González to leave Venezuela in the name of maintaining peace in the troubled South American nation.
“Once the relevant contacts between [the Spanish and the Venezuelan] governments had taken place, and the requirements of the case in compliance with international law had been met, Venezuela granted the necessary safe-passage authorization for the sake of the country’s tranquility and political peace,” she wrote.
The Venezuelan opposition claims that González defeated Maduro in July’s presidential election by a margin of more than 2-1, and published the official vote tallies, known as actas, gathered in more than 80% of the country’s voting stations.
The government-controlled National Electoral Council had announced on election night that Maduro had won with nearly 52% of the vote but has so far failed to produce the actas demonstrating the victory of the Venezuelan strongman, despite repeated calls from the international community to do so.
This story was originally published September 8, 2024 at 9:59 AM.
