Former candidate Edmundo González did not appear at his second summons at the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office.
Opponent Edmundo González UrrutiaHe did not attend a second summons from the prosecution on Tuesday to testify in a criminal investigation against him.after denouncing fraud in the presidential election on 28 July.
Although the prosecution cited him for the second time, Gonzalez did not show up. It was no surprise: the rival of re-elected president Nicolas Maduro is in hiding and has not appeared in public for three weeks.
The 74-year-old career diplomat, who replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as a candidate, claims her victory and claims to have the evidence to prove it. The claim, however, clashes with the institutional wall, accused of serving Nicolas Maduro.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro victor with 52% of the vote, although without publishing the detail of the result,and the latter in turn was validated by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).
The prosecution is investigating him for the alleged commission of “usurpation of functions” and “public document forging.”These offences can theoretically lead to a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
The coalition that supported his candidacy, the Democratic Unitarian Platform (PUD), denounced a “judicial wing” against Gonzalez, who on Sunday called on the Attorney General Tarek William Saab to”political accuser” for promoting “a summons without guarantees of independence and due process.”
The PUD, made up of 10 opposition parties, denounced that “the repeated summons of the Public Prosecutor’s Office seeks to justify a driving mandate against our winning candidate, to accentuate their persecution.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has not yet ruled on a possible third summons.
Irregular
The first summons was sent on Saturday and, like the second, did not specify as what was summoned: accused, witness or expert, according to Venezuelan law. He talks about “watching an interview in relation to the facts that this office investigates.”
“This is a totally irregular summons and is designed precisely to try to make a mistake,” Zair Mundaray, a former Venezuelan former defencemac, told AFP. “We are faced with an obvious trick of political persecution that has no formality.”
Gonzalez last appeared in public two days after the election, at an opposition demonstration in Caracas. Since then, it has limited itself to making pronouncements via the Internet.
Maduro called him a “coward,” while Saab holds him responsible with Machado for acts of violence in post-election protests that left 27 dead,two of them military, almost200 wounded and more than 2,400 detainees.
The president asked for jail for both of them.
“The pardons are over,” said the powerful Chavista leader Diosdado Cabello. “Who attacks the institutions that assume their responsibility.”
“Acta kills a sentence”.
Machado, also criminally investigated, called for protests for Wednesday 28, a month after the elections. “Acta kills judgment,” he wrote on social media, referring to copies of more than 80% of the voting records he posted on a website, which is also the target of Saab’s investigation. Chavismo also called for a march that same day.
Machado is among the three finalists for the prizeVáclav Havel of the Council of Europe, which recognizes actions in defense of human rights, as announced by the organization on Tuesday.
The independence of the CNE and the TSJ is called into question by a UN mission that assesses the human rights situation in Venezuela. The United States, 10 Latin American countries and the head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, rejected the supreme court’s ruling.
In contrast, the countries of the ALBA alliance ,Created in 2004 by the late socialist leaders Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, they expressed support for Maduro.
In efforts for a negotiation between Maduro and the opposition, the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Colombia, Gustavo Petro, insisted in a joint communiqué that “deagglossed and verifiable” results should be published.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo