Maduro Calls for Machado, González to Be Jailed for 30 Years
- Venezuelan president pushes for legitimacy after disputed vote
- He continued to ratchet up rhetoric against opposition leaders
Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference at Miraflores Palace in Caracas on Wednesday.
Photographer: Gaby Oraa/BloombergVenezuela President Nicolás Maduro said María Corina Machado and Edmundo González should face prison sentences of at least 30 years for promoting post-election violence and seeking to destabilize his government.
At a press conference at the presidential palace on Wednesday afternoon, Maduro ratcheted up rhetoric against the opposition leaders, who say they can prove his election win on Sunday was fraudulent. He directly addressed the two.
“Ms. Machado, where are you? Why don’t you show your face, after so much outrage and violence?,” Maduro said, building on top lawmaker Jorge Rodríguez’s call for her arrest on Tuesday.
“Mr. González, you are responsible for this and much more. There are dead military members. Take responsibility. Like I said yesterday, coward, the impunity ends here.”
Earlier Wednesday, Maduro had requested that Venezuela’s High Court take over auditing of the voting data from the electoral board. The move ignores calls from the Biden administration, governments from the G-7 and allies Colombia and Brazil to allow transparent accounting of the results, sparking increasing doubts of the legitimacy of his term.
Venezuela’s top judicial body has for years been controlled by regime loyalists who have issued favorable decisions on issues from expropriations by the state to the banning of opposition political candidates.
The disputed election outcome is casting doubt on hopes that the US will lift economic sanctions any time soon, promising to leave Venezuela cut off from international capital markets and delay efforts to deal with some $150 billion of defaulted bonds, loans and legal judgments owed to creditors from Wall Street to China.
Maduro’s move Wednesday “points to further radicalization and little leeway to negotiate any exit or transition, so the only path forward seems an escalation of the conflict,” Ramiro Blazquez, head of research at Antitrust & Co., said by email.
Venezuela’s electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro appointees, said early Monday morning the incumbent president defeated opposition rival González by a margin of 51% to 44% of the votes. González and Machado, for whom he is standing in, immediately disputed that.
The opposition says it has now gathered 84% of voting tabulations to prove González is the rightful winner in Sunday’s election. The Carter Center, the sole observer of international repute that monitored the election, said late Tuesday the vote “cannot be considered democratic.”
On Wednesday, White House spokesperson John Kirby, said “our patience, and that of the international community, is running out,” adding that the electoral authority needed to “come clean” and release the voting data.
— With assistance from Andreina Itriago Acosta and Fabiola Zerpa
(Updates throughout with details of Maduro’s latest comments on the opposition.
