AREQUIPA, Peru – “We will not allow them to continue causing harm, their time is up (…) There will be an iron fist and justice for the fascists and the violent ones,” said Nicolás Maduro, leader of the Venezuelan regime, during the closing ceremony of his electoral campaign held on Bolívar Avenue in Caracas.
According to information from news agencies EFE and AFP, as well as the video of the event, published by Maduro himself on his account from YouTubethe dictator tried to discredit the opposition with his speech three days before the elections in Venezuela.
The Chavista leader accused the Venezuelan opposition of planning to ignore the results in order to launch acts of violence. He also said that the Armed Forces are loyal to him and could rise up against a possible opposition government.
At the close of his political campaign, Maduro also asked the Venezuelan people to think carefully about the vote they will cast this Sunday at the polls, where the Chavista leader will seek a second re-election.
“Think carefully, for your family, for your business, for your company, for your work, who of the 10 candidates guarantees peace and stability in Venezuela?” he asked.
While Maduro was addressing the assembled crowd, another larger and spontaneous mass of Caracas residents were celebrating their opposition in the same city, but on Las Mercedes Avenue, which is more than a kilometer long.
From the east of the Venezuelan capital, the presidential candidate for the Democratic Unitary Platform, Edmundo González Urrutia, and the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, sent a message of strength and prosperity to a town in crisisahead of Sunday’s elections.
“We are ready to vote, to win and to celebrate,” said María Corina Machado to the crowd of Caracas residents.
With presidential elections looming in Venezuela on July 28, the continued restriction of civic space, coupled with systematic violations of fundamental rights, is especially worrying.
Human rights violations in Venezuela
In accordance with several surveysThe will of the majority of the Venezuelan people is to vote on July 28 for political change and candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, but it remains uncertain whether the Maduro regime will accept a possible defeat at the polls.
So far, the electoral campaign has been neither fair nor free, given Maduro’s control over the National Electoral Council and much of the media, the exclusion of millions of Venezuelans living abroad from the elections, the 15-year political disqualification of the winner of the primaries of the opposition to Chavismo, María Corina Machado, and several arrests of people in opposition or perceived as such.
This is part of the repressive structures warned by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuelawhich pursue the objectives of, in their most violent form, silencing opposing voices or generating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
The reports of this mission, established in 2019, provided, among other sources, Reasons to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Venezuela, which motivated the opening of a investigation by the International Criminal Court.
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