(Caracas) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday denounced a “coup led by the United States and the international far right” after his contested re-election, also accusing the opposition of preparing attacks in the country.
“The United States considers itself the electoral authority in Venezuela and the rest of the world,” Maduro said, repeatedly attacking the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, by name.
During a press conference at the presidency, he once again denounced a “coup d’état led by the USA, the international extreme right and savage capitalism.”
On the eve of the day of mobilization promised by the opposition, Mr. Maduro called for “alert”, accusing the opposition once again of wanting to create unrest, and promising in response a strong security deployment.
On Thursday, Blinken, citing “incontrovertible evidence,” said opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia had won the July 28 presidential election. Following his statement, five Latin American countries recognized the opposition leader’s victory.
On Friday, the Venezuelan electoral authority ratified Mr Maduro’s contested victory with 52% of the vote, against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (43%).
“Criminals”, “drug addicts”
During his speech, Mr. Maduro returned, after a long preamble on the Constitution and the “Bolivarian electoral system”, to the demonstrations of Monday and Tuesday contesting the results of the presidential election, an electoral “farce” according to the opposition.
He listed the “attacks carried out” by “criminals” and “drug addicts”, recently returned to Venezuela after having been “trained in Texas”, against buildings and symbols of power, including “27 statues of (Simon) Bolivar and (Hugo) Chavez”.
“Blinken, are these peaceful protesters?” Maduro asked, denouncing a “premeditated plan” by “fascists” who had attacked “symbols of Bolivarian Chavism.”
He returned to the “unprecedented computer attack” against the National Electoral Council (CNE), which prevented this institution from publishing the detailed results of the election, according to the authorities. In passing, he scratched the international media that “do not want to say that in Venezuela there is a Constitution and a law in the event of electoral disputes.”
Mr. Maduro once again vehemently attacked his opponent, this “assassinator of Gonzalez”, as well as the leader of the opposition, the “cursed” Maria Maria Corina Machado, whom he had already threatened to imprison.
PHOTO YURI CORTEZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia during a partisan rally in Caracas, July 30, 2024
He particularly criticized Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia for not responding this Friday to a summons from the Supreme Court of all the candidates in the election, threatening him with “very serious legal consequences.”
He had “no excuse for not responding to this summons”, especially since “the radical far right has multiplied the cries of fraud”, Mr. Maduro judged.
He called for “alert”, saying that an “attack against the police” was being prepared tomorrow Saturday in Caracas, pointing to “Mme Machado and his accomplice the puppet Gonzalez.
Finally, he vilified the Latin American countries (Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Panama) that recognized the victory of opponent Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia this Friday, a “bunch of fascist puppets” who “just took up the American position.”