What the government said after US recognition
The government of Nicolás Maduro described as ridiculous the recognition by the United States this Tuesday of the opponent Edmundo González Urrutia as president-elect almost four months after the elections.
“The only place you don’t come back from is ridicule,” says the popular saying,” reacted the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yván Gil, on Telegram.
The head of US diplomacy, Antony “Blinken, a confessed enemy of Venezuela, insists on doing it again,” added Gil in reference to the recognition that he granted in Washington in 2019 to the opposition Juan Guaidó.
Blinken on Tuesday described González Urrutia, exiled in Spain since September 8 after an arrest warrant issued against him, as the elected president of Venezuela.
“The Venezuelan people spoke out emphatically on July 28” and made “Edmundo González president-elect,” Blinken said on the social network X.
The government of Democrat Joe Biden declared a few days after the elections that the opposition had obtained the largest number of votes and requested the publication of the electoral records.
However, it is the first time that Washington has called him president-elect.
The opposition, led by María Corina Machado, protagonist of the electoral campaign and in hiding, claims the victory of González Urrutia supported by 80% of the minutes compiled with the help of electoral witnesses and compiled on a website that the government has branded as fraudulent.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro for a third six-year period (2025-2031) without showing the details of the scrutiny as established by Venezuelan legislation.
After the announcement, protests broke out, leaving 28 dead, nearly 200 injured and at least 2,400 detained. The Venezuelan justice system, accused of serving Chavismo, approved freedom measures for 225 of the post-election prisoners on November 15.
“Democracy demands respect for the will of the voters,” Blinken continued in the message in X, published a day after Foreign Ministers addressed the post-election crisis in Venezuela, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Brazil.
On his social networks, González Urrutia expressed his “deep gratitude for the recognition of the sovereign will of all Venezuelans.”
“This gesture honors our people’s desire for change and the civic feat that together we carried out on July 28,” said the 75-year-old ambassador..
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