“Let’s go get them!”: Maduro calls for denunciation to flush out “traitors” in Venezuela

Photo: Yuri Cortez Agence France-Presse Members of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's honor guard stand on the roof of the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on August 7, 2024.

Patrick Fort – Agence France-Presse In Caracas

Published at 10:58 a.m. Updated at 7:28 p.m.

• Americas

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The Venezuelan opposition warned Thursday that an unprecedented exodus will occur if President Nicolás Maduro remains in power after his disputed re-election, with Washington warning the government against any attempt to arrest protest leaders.

“If Maduro chooses to cling to power by force […] we could only see a wave of migration like we have never seen before: 3, 4, 5 million Venezuelans in a very short time,” the country’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said in a video conference with Mexican media.

According to the UN, some 7 of the 30 million Venezuelans have left the country in a decade due to the economic and political crisis, heading to Latin American countries, but also to the United States.

The subject has become a domestic political debate in many countries, and particularly in the United States.

Washington, which is at the head of sanctions against Venezuela, toughened since 2019, raised his voice on Thursday, warning that the arrest of opposition leaders could “mobilize the international community even more, including countries that do not want to make too many waves” , against Venezuela.

“If Maduro goes in this direction, it will unite the international community in a way that he has no idea of, and his efforts to divide and fracture it will have completely failed,” said Francisco Mora, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

The opposition leader and Edmundo González Urrutia, a low-key diplomat who replaced Machado — who was declared ineligible — as a presidential candidate, have been in hiding for more than a week, with the politician even saying she feared for her life.

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The prosecutor's office has opened a criminal investigation against the two leaders, including charges of “usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information, incitement to disobedience of the law, incitement to insurrection [and] criminal conspiracy.”

Underscoring his “absolute vulnerability” to the authorities, Mr. González Urrutia, 74, did not appear on Wednesday for a summons from the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia), which has cited all the candidates and other officials as part of a procedure launched by Mr. Maduro to “validate” his re-election.

The Tribunal, which the opposition and many observers consider subservient to the government, continued its hearings on Thursday ahead of the highly anticipated hearing, scheduled for Friday, of Mr. Maduro himself.

The unrest that followed the proclamation of the outgoing president’s victory left 24 dead, according to a toll updated Tuesday by human rights organizations. Nicolás Maduro announced the death of two members of the National Guard and the arrest of more than 2,200 people.

The National Electoral Council (CNE), also considered to be in power, ratified Mr. Maduro’s victory with 52% of the vote, without however making public the exact count of the ballots and the minutes of the polling stations, assuring that it had been the victim of a computer hack.

According to the opposition, which published the minutes obtained thanks to its scrutineers — the validity of which Mr. Maduro rejects — Edmundo González Urrutia won the election with 67% of the vote.

The opposition and many observers believe that the hacking of the CNE is a pretext invented by the government to avoid having to publish the minutes of the polling stations.

In Caracas, in front of the community Diplomatic Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on Thursday lashed out at the international community and social media: “There is international hysteria about the minutes, they could even make a Netflix series.”

“Excuse me, Mr. French Ambassador, but it even covered the Olympic Games, the minutes even overshadowed the Olympic Games in France,” she said ironically.

She repeated that the CNE had been the victim of a “massive cyber attack” and added that “the dictatorship of social networks seeks to replace the popular will of governments elected by their citizens.”