Venezuela’s government has said it will order former opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez to provide sworn testimony in an ongoing investigation into what it considers attempts to spread panic in the South American country by contesting the results of last month’s presidential election.
The attempt on Friday is the latest by Nicolas Maduro’s government to crack down on opponents who claim they handily defeated the self-declared socialist leader.
Mr Maduro has refused to recognise defeat and claims he won the July 28 election by more than one million votes, even though tally sheets by Mr Gonzalez’s campaign and published online show the president lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
The US, United Nations and others said the vote lacked credibility and even some of Mr Maduro’s leftist allies in Latin America have called on him to publish the voting records.
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab at a press conference on Friday accused the former candidate of trying to “illegally usurp responsibilities that belong exclusively” to the National Electoral Council.
Mr Gonzalez went into hiding after the July 28 vote as security forces have rounded up more than 2,000 demonstrators and political activists for challenging the official results.
He has been joined underground by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who picked Mr Gonzalez as a last minute stand-in after her own candidacy was disqualified.
Ruling party stalwarts have called for their arrest but so far authorities have held off.
The Biden administration in the US condemned a ruling by Venezuela’s Supreme Court certifying Mr Maduro’s win on Friday.
The high court on Thursday said it had performed an audit of the results and found they matched the results announced by electoral authorities, adding that the tally sheets published online by the opposition were forged.
“This ruling lacks all credibility, given the overwhelming evidence that Gonzalez received the most votes on July 28,” US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
“Continued attempts to fraudulently claim victory for Maduro will only exacerbate the ongoing crisis.”
Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide.
The tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Venezuela to act in a transparent manner and expressed concern about human rights violations on Friday.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose government is leading an attempt with Brazil and Colombia to resolve the dispute, said that he will withhold recognising Mr Maduro as the winner until a breakdown of results are published.
