Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro said his opposition rivals and their supporters who took to the street should be jailed for at least 30 years, as he asked the nation’s government-controlled top court to verify his self-declared electoral victory.
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At a press conference at the presidential palace on Wednesday afternoon, Maduro ratcheted up rhetoric against María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, saying they “should be behind bars” for promoting post-election violence and seeking to destabilize his government. The opposition leaders say they have enough proof that González is the rightful winner of Sunday’s election. Maduro directly addressed the two.
“Ms. Machado, where are you? Why don’t you show your face, after so much outrage and violence?” Maduro said, building on top lawmaker Jorge Rodríguez’s call for her arrest on Tuesday following demonstrations.
“Mr. González, you are responsible for this and much more,” Maduro continued. “There are dead members of the military. Take responsibility. Like I said yesterday, coward, the impunity ends here.”
Earlier Wednesday, Maduro had requested that Venezuela’s high court take over auditing of the voting data from the electoral board. The move ignores calls from the Biden administration, governments from the Group of Seven and allies Colombia and Brazil to allow transparent accounting of the results, increasing doubts of the legitimacy of Sunday’s election.
Venezuela’s top judicial body has for years been controlled by regime loyalists who have issued favorable decisions on issues from expropriations by the state to the banning of opposition political candidates.
The disputed election outcome is casting doubt on hopes that the U.S. will lift economic sanctions any time soon, promising to leave Venezuela cut off from international capital markets and delay efforts to deal with some $150 billion of defaulted bonds, loans and legal judgments owed to creditors from Wall Street to China.
Maduro’s move Wednesday “points to further radicalization and little leeway to negotiate any exit or transition, so the only path forward seems an escalation of the conflict,” Ramiro Blazquez, head of research at BancTrust & Co., said by email.
Venezuela’s electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro appointees, said early Monday morning the incumbent president defeated opposition rival González by a margin of 51% to 44% of the votes. González and Machado, for whom he is standing in, immediately disputed that.
The opposition says it has now gathered 84% of voting tabulations to prove González is the rightful winner in Sunday’s election. The Carter Center, the sole observer of international repute that monitored the election, said late Tuesday the vote “cannot be considered democratic.”
On Wednesday, White House spokesperson John Kirby, said “our patience, and that of the international community, is running out,” adding that the electoral authority needed to “come clean” and release the voting data.
In his address, Maduro said he respected U.S. President Joe Biden and his decision to step out of the country’s election this year. But, he pressed, “How come you say you have lost patience with Venezuela? Then I’ve lost it with you. This is David versus Goliath.”