María Corina Machado calls on her supporters for a demonstration on Tuesday against Maduro.
Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said Monday that presidential candidate Edmundo González won the election victory with 73 percent of the vote (6.2 million), making her the president-elect, although the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro the winner with 51 percent of the ballots.
Machado, who has added that according to his data Maduro would have obtained 2.7 million votes, explained that they have digitized the minutes, – “the evidence of Venezuela’s victory” – and will publish them on a web portal that each elector will be able to consult. “The truth we said we were going to assert, the world is already being tested (…) The difference was overwhelming. The difference was in all the states of Venezuela, in all we won, you won,” he said during a press conference in which he addressed González.
For his part, the presidential aspirant has spoken to his supporters “with the tranquillity of the truth”: “I want to say with total responsibility to all the Venezuelan people, that the will expressed yesterday through their vote we will make it respect. That’s the only way to peace. The minutes that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible triumph. I would like to thank the international community for its solidarity and support for Venezuela at this time. Our triumph is historic,” he said.
Gonzalez has assured that his candidacy has won “in places where the democratic forces of this country have never won” in the last 25 years. “In his position, we want to respect each of the millions of Venezuelans who came out to vote yesterday. A people who make themselves respected and we will fight for our freedom. Dear friends, I understand (your) indignation, but our response from the democratic sectors is of calm and faith,” he said.
While he has claimed that the country “desires peace and recognition of the will and expression of the people,” he has criticized the “premature announcement” of the Venezuelan authorities regarding the results of the elections without having been audited. Thus, he considered that “they are not a sign of responsible leadership” and that “obstruction in the transmission of minutes are serious effects on an electoral process.”
March against fraud
Machado has pointed out that the demonstrations that are taking place in different parts of the country are “expressions of citizens who resist” the “stealing the future, that the truth is unknown.” “They are spontaneous expressions in popular areas, they are legitimate expressions in the face of an illegitimate regime,” he said.
In this regard, he called on his supporters to demonstrate this Tuesday between 11 a.m. and 12 noon (local time) against Maduro: “We want to summon all Venezuelans who yesterday went to vote for a change and who want Venezuela to be free and dignified,” he said before indicating that the aim is to “have a Venezuela” of which to be “deeply proud.”
Finally, he clarified that they are convening “huge popular assemblies where there are so many crowded people” because they cannot discourage them “with threats from a few violent groups” and assured that “the regime wants to provoke violence,” but that “for there to be war there must be enemies and in Venezuela there are no enemies.”
The CNE announced in the early hours of Monday that Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, had won re-election after receiving 5.1 million votes, according to 80 percent of the vote. For his part, the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, has been in second place with 44 percent of the vote (4.4 million votes).
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo