Caracas Venezuela — Venezuela’s attorney general announced on Monday a criminal investigation against opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González and his leader María Corina Machado over their call for the armed forces to abandon their support for President Nicolás Maduro and stop repressing protesters.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab’s statement linked the investigation directly to a written appeal that the two opposition members sent hours earlier about Maduro and the protesters who came out in force to defend their votes in the July 28 elections.
Saab, in a written announcement published on the social network to disobey the laws.”
The appeal brief by González and Machado shows the alleged commission of various crimes, including usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information to cause fear and conspiracy, Saab said.
The armed forces are traditionally the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela. But they have shown no signs of abandoning Maduro, even in the face of credible evidence presented by the opposition that he defeated the self-proclaimed socialist at the polls by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
González and Machado called on rank-and-file members of the security forces to reconsider their loyalty to Maduro.
“We appeal to the conscience of the military and the police to stand on the side of the people and their families,” both wrote in a long message.
“We won these elections without a doubt. “It was an electoral avalanche,” the two continued. “Now it is up to all of us to respect the voice of the people.”
The authorities have declared Ripe the winner in last Sunday’s elections but they have not yet produced vote counts to show that he won. The opposition claims to have collected records from more than 80% of the 30,000 polling stations across the country showing it won.
Maduro announced on Saturday that The government has arrested 2,000 opponents and at a rally in Caracas he promised to arrest more people and send them to prison. The post-election uprising has also claimed at least 11 lives, according to Foro Penal, a Caracas-based human rights group.
The Venezuela-based human rights organization Provea, in a report published Monday analyzing the post-election climate, concluded that the government’s response to silence the people’s discontent has been “through the disproportionate use of force” that has resulted in the death of protesters and “the open coordinated action between security forces and groups of armed civilians in favor of Nicolás Maduro to calm the protests” that has caused an increase in arbitrary arrests.
The organization reported that based on figures announced by the Attorney General’s Office last week, the number of arrests against real or alleged opponents of the government is equivalent to around 42% “of the total number of arbitrary arrests recorded by Provea between April and August 2017, the most important cycle of protests in the country since 1989.”
González and Machado in their letter called on Venezuelans with family members who serve in the security forces to urge their loved ones not to attack protesters and not to obey illegal orders. He said he would offer “guarantees” to soldiers that they respect the Constitution, although he promised there would be no impunity for those behind abuses and following illegal orders.
Both González, a former diplomat, and Machado, who was banned by the government from running, have gone into hiding, saying they fear being arrested or killed. Maduro and his cadres have threatened to lock them both up.
As Venezuelans fight Maduro in the streets, international pressure is also mounting for the Venezuelan government to publish the full breakdown of the election results.
But so far, Maduro has asked the country’s Supreme Court, which like all institutions in Venezuela is packed with loyalists, to review any allegations of irregularities.
“Respect for popular sovereignty is what moves us to defend the transparency of the (electoral) results” The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva he said Monday at a news conference alongside Chile’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric.
Boric, who cast doubt on Maduro’s victory in an unexpectedly strong statement just hours after Venezuela’s July 28 election, told reporters that he and Lula discussed the situation in Venezuela on Monday, without giving further details. The leaders did not answer questions and their carefully worded statements signaled how leftist leaders in the region are cautiously trying to show respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty while expressing doubts about the official results.
Some of Maduro’s staunch allies, including Russia, China and Cuba, have applauded his victory. On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian held a phone call with Maduro and reiterated his congratulations and “condemned any foreign interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs,” Pezeshkian’s office said.
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AP writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.
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