Election results 2024 in Venezuela, live | Opponent Edmundo González receives a new summons from the prosecutor’s office

Weekend summary: González Urrutia called to testify as international pressure mounts

Venezuelans are about to complete a month immersed in a post-election crisis whose end is hard to see. This weekend, the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, was summoned to answer for the publication of the minutes that the opposition managed to collect and with which it wants to show the world its victory in the July 28 elections. The 74-year-old diplomat, who has been under protection for almost a month due to growing threats from Chavismo, was summoned to appear before the Prosecutor’s Office in Caracas this Monday at 10 a.m. This Sunday, in a video published on his social networks, he rejected the summons: “The Public Ministry intends to subject me to an interview without specifying in what situation I am expected to appear and that pre-qualifying crimes have not been committed. “The prosecutor (Tarek William Saab) has repeatedly behaved like a political accuser,” he said. “He previously condemned and now escalated the situation without guarantees of freedom and due process.”

The government continues its siege against the opposition, while repression continues on the street. This Sunday, Bolivarian police arrested entertainment journalist Carmela Longo, who will be tried in an anti-terrorism court, according to the Press Union. The arrests come in a context of persecution of critical voices. The Institute of Press and Society (IPYS) has confirmed eleven arrests of media workers in the South American country this year, eight of them after the election.

The opposition has also denounced the arrest of Luis Istúriz, political secretary of the Vente Venezuela party in the state of Miranda, and his wife, Andriuska Sánchez, whom the organization claims to have been unaware of this Saturday, when they were arrested by officers of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, according to the complaint.

Meanwhile, international pressure is mounting on President Nicolás Maduro to present the minutes that make transparent the victory awarded to him by the organs of the Chavista state and also to end the repression. After the Venezuelan Supreme Court confirmed the victory last Thursday, the United States and a dozen Latin American countries rejected the decision.

On Saturday, the presidents of Brazil and Colombia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, stressed in a joint statement that the credibility of Venezuela’s electoral process “can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data.” The European Union also increased pressure on the Maduro government by rejecting a Venezuelan judge’s endorsement of his victory in the July 28 elections. In a statement promoted by Spain, they declared the evidence presented by the ruling party insufficient and warned that the EU would only recognize “complete” and “independently” verified results.

On the other hand, mobilizations are expected this week. The opposition has called for protests under the slogan Acta Kills Sentences, in reference to the TSJ proposal on Wednesday, a month after the election. “On this August 28, as a family, with our children, with our grandchildren and with the minutes in our hands, we ratify #ActaMataSentencia,” opposition leader Maria Corina Machado wrote on the social network X when making the call. “Every day we have more strength and we go to the end!!”