CARACAS.- Opposition leader María Corina Machado led the “global protest for the truth” in Caracas on Saturday, against the electoral fraud of Nicolás Maduro, where she said that “it is time to collect” the popular sovereignty expressed by Venezuelans on July 28.
From Francisco de Miranda Avenue, near the Líder Shopping Center, located east of Caracas, the Venezuelan opposition leader said she will continue calling for demonstrations to pressure the Venezuelan dictatorship to recognize its defeat.
“We have the votes, we have the minutes, we are not going to leave the streets,” said Machado, before thousands of Caracas residents who went out with printed ballots to claim the victory of the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
“With intelligence, with prudence, with resilience, with audacity and peacefully, because violence suits them (…). Peaceful protest is our right,” he added.
Civic feat
Riding in the usual white truck and accompanied by various opposition leaders, Machado, who left her shelter to participate in the call that was replicated in more than 350 cities around the world, said that the popular will expressed on July 28 “is the greatest civic feat in our history.”
“Today we have more strength than ever. What happened on July 28 and 29 has the world amazed, they could not believe what we did. We have established a new parameter for monitoring and defending the vote,” he emphasized.
He also pointed out that what happened on July 28 and 29 surprised a regime that “is totally disconnected from reality, and they never imagined that those more than 12 million Venezuelans would go to vote. They also believed that fear and threats would make people give up voting for change.”
“They thought that by persecuting our witnesses we were not going to get our records, but within 24 hours we had the records digitalized. Center by center, table by table. We have to be very proud, never before had a society rebelled in this way and managed to strip the tyrant and leave him in the place where he deserves, without any legitimacy,” he emphasized.
Fifth stage
Machado indicated that a “fifth stage” is currently underway, which consists of “collecting” González Urrutia’s victory and ensuring that “every vote is respected.”
“There is nothing above the voice of the sovereign, and the sovereign spoke in Venezuela. Let the world and everyone in Venezuela recognize that the president-elect is Edmundo González Urrutia,” he said.
He also said that when Maduro saw himself “defeated and discovered,” he opted for the “cruelest of all policies,” which was “to entrench himself in a group of the high military command and order a campaign of repression, which has been the most horrible and cruelest in the history of Venezuela,” which was unleashed during the protests against Nicolás Maduro’s electoral fraud, resulting in at least 24 people dead and more than 2,000,000 arrested.
International community
In this regard, he recalled that this week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression condemned the practices being carried out by the Maduro regime, which they described as “state terrorism.”
“The Commission has never said this since the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone. This is something else (…) and the world has said it, it denounces it,” said Machado.
He also stated that the Organization of American States (OAS) requested “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” and urged the Venezuelan electoral body to publish the minutes with the election results in an “expeditious” manner.
Machado said that more than 20 countries and the European Union also issued a joint statement demanding the “immediate” publication of the original reports and their independent verification, as well as requesting the release of the detainees.
