Second summons to Maduro’s rival to testify before the prosecutor’s office after denouncing fraud in Venezuela

The Venezuelan prosecutor’s office summoned the Opponent Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who received a second summons after failing to appear on Monday in response to a criminal investigation into his allegations of fraud in the July 28 presidential election.

After 10:00, the time of the summons, Gonzalez has not yet appeared before the Public Prosecutor’s OfficeAFP journalists confirmed. It is no surprise: the rival of re-elected President Nicolas Maduro is in hiding and has not appeared in public for three weeks.

Gonzalez, a 74-year-old career diplomat who replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, He claims victory and says he has the evidence to prove it. The claim, however, hits the institutional wall, accused of serving the re-elected president Nicolás Maduro.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro the winner with 52% of the votes, although without publishing the details of the result, and this in turn was validated by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).

The prosecutor is investigating the opposition politician for allegedly committing “usurpation of functions” and “forging public documents.” These crimes could theoretically lead to a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

The coalition that supported his candidacy, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), denounced “judicial harassment” against González, who on Sunday called the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, a “political accuser” for promoting “a subpoena without guarantees of independence and due process.”

The PUD – made up of 10 opposition parties – denounced that “the repeated summons by the Public Prosecutor’s Office seeks to justify an execution order against our winning candidate, to accentuate his persecution.”

The first summons was sent on Saturday and, like the second, did not specify the capacity in which he was summoned: defendant, witness or expert, according to Venezuelan law. It speaks of “giving an interview in relation to the facts that this office is investigating.”

“This is a totally irregular summons and is designed precisely to try to make a mistake,” Zair Mundaray, a former Venezuelan prosecutor, told AFP. “We are faced with an obvious political persecution trick that does not follow any formality.”

González last appeared in public two days after the election, at an opposition rally in Caracas. Since then, he has limited himself to making statements via the Internet.

Maduro called him a “coward,” while Saab blamed him and Machado for acts of violence in post-election protests that left 27 dead – two of them soldiers -, almost 200 injured and more than 2,400 arrested.

“The pardons are over“, said the powerful Chavista leader Diosdado Cabello. “Anyone who attacks institutions must assume responsibility.”

Machado called for protests for next Wednesday, a month before the elections. “A record kills a sentence!” he wrote on social media, referring to the copies of more than 80% of the voting records he published on a website, also targeted by Saab’s investigation. Chavismo also called for a march that same day.

Machado is among the three finalists for the Council of Europe’s Václav Havel Prize, which recognizes actions in defense of human rights, the organization announced on Tuesday.

The independence of the CNE and the TSJ is being questioned by a UN mission assessing the human rights situation in Venezuela. The United States, 10 Latin American countries and the head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, rejected the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In contrast, countries in the ALBA alliance – created in 2004 by the late socialist leaders Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro – expressed support for Maduro.

In efforts for a negotiation between Maduro and the opposition, the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro insisted in a joint statement that “broken down and verifiable” results must be published.