Venezuela: Maria Corina Machado prepares “huge activity” in support of political change

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she is preparing a “huge event” to support the political change in the nation, which held presidential elections on July 28, and whose official result from the ruling National Electoral Council (CNE) (which confirmed Nicolás Maduro as the winner) has been questioned by the opposition, international observers and other countries.

“We are going to be calling for a huge event where everyone (…) has to see the strength, determination, the decision that we Venezuelans have made, that there is no turning back,” said the politician and engineer in a conversation with Venezuelan-American singer Lele Pons, which was broadcast on Instagram.

Without giving many details about how and when the event would take place, Machado said that the event, which will take place “inside and outside” Venezuela, will take place “very soon” and the call will be announced “in the next few hours,” in support of the anti-Chavez standard-bearer of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González Urrutia, whom she refers to as the “new president-elect” of the South American country.

“We are not going to leave the streets, that does not mean that we are going to be in the streets every day,” insisted González Urrutia’s main supporter, who hopes that “all those who are hurt” by Venezuela will join this activity, which she defined as “a moment of encounter.”

He also stressed that the movement he leads, which accuses Maduro of electoral fraud, is “organized, civic and peaceful” but “is not docile,” but rather encourages “a very robust strategy” to finish off once and for all the Chavista government, which has been in power since 1999.

Machado said that Maduro’s recommendation to stop using the WhatsApp messaging application and the suspension of X are signs that “they are frightened” within the Chavista leadership, since, he insisted, they lost the elections, as previously denounced by the Carter Center, which was monitoring the electoral process.

The CNE, which claims to have suffered a cyber attack on July 28, proclaimed Maduro the winner, but after two weeks it has not published disaggregated results as required by law, which has been criticized by many countries, including administrations allied to Chavismo.

Continue reading:

• Maduro: The only negotiation with María Corina Machado will be for her to surrender to justice
• Mexico, Colombia and Brazil reject the TSJ as the body to publish the results in Venezuela
• “I have no doubt that Maduro has tried to commit fraud”: Boric joins in denouncing the electoral victory of the Venezuelan president