Venezuela's attorney general on Monday (August 5) announced a criminal investigation into opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González and his leader Maria Corina Machado over their calls for the armed forces to drop their support for President Nicolás Maduro and stop repressing protesters.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab's statement linked the investigation directly to a written appeal, sent by the two opposition members hours earlier, about Maduro and the protesters who had resorted to violence to defend their votes in the July 28 election.
Saab, in a written announcement posted on the social media site X, said the two “wrongly announced the winner of the presidential election other than that announced by the National Election Council, the only body qualified to do so” and that they openly incited “police and military officials to disobey the law.”
Gonzalez and Machado's written pleas allege multiple crimes including usurpation of function, spreading false information to create fear and conspiracy, Saab said.
The armed forces have traditionally been the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela. But they have shown no sign of abandoning Maduro, even in the face of credible evidence presented by the opposition that they defeated the self-proclaimed socialist president in the election by more than 2-to-1.
González and Machado asked members of the security forces to rethink their loyalty to Maduro.
Authorities have declared Maduro the winner of Sunday's election, but have not released vote tallies to prove he won. The opposition says it has collected more than 80% of data from 30,000 polling stations across the country showing it won.
Maduro announced Saturday that the government had arrested 2,000 of his opponents and at a rally in Caracas, he vowed to detain more people and send them to prison. The post-election uprising has also left at least 11 people dead, according to Foro Penal, a Caracas-based human rights group. (th/ka)
