CARACAS (AP) — For millions of Venezuelans, as well as dozens of foreign governments, Edmundo González was the undisputed winner of the July 28 presidential election.
But on Sunday, Gonzalez joined a growing ranks of once-prominent government opponents who have fled into exile, leaving his political future uncertain and strengthening Nicolas Maduro’s grip on power.
The former presidential candidate arrived at a military airport outside Madrid on Sunday after being granted safe passage by Maduro’s government to seek asylum in Spain. His surprise departure came just days after Maduro’s government ordered his arrest.
Gonzalez, 75, burst onto Venezuela’s political scene less than five months ago. Her candidacy was as accidental as can be after powerful opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was barred from running as was a hand-picked replacement.
In April, a coalition of more than 10 parties settled on Gonzalez, who overnight went from being a virtually unknown retired diplomat and a devoted grandfather to a household name in whom millions pinned their hopes of ending more than two decades of one-party rule.
Accompanied by Machado, he crisscrossed the country in the final weeks of the campaign rallying massive crowds of Venezuelans who blame Maduro for one of the worst economic collapses in history outside a war zone.
“Let us imagine for a moment the country that is coming,” he told a crowd of cheering supporters at a rally in La Victoria, a once-thriving industrial city. “A country where the president does not insult or see his adversaries as enemies. A country where when you come home from work you know that your money has value, that when you turn on the light switch there will be electricity, that when you turn on the tap there will be water.”
Although the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner, the opposition’s superiority on the ground allowed it to gather evidence showing that it was actually González who prevailed by a margin of more than 2 to 1. Foreign governments condemned the official results as lacking credibility, and even some of Maduro’s leftist allies refused to recognize them, demanding that authorities publish a breakdown of the results from all 30 voting machines across the country, as it has done in the past.
In the weeks since the disputed vote, both opposition figures have gone into hiding amid a brutal crackdown that has led to more than 2,000 arrests and the deaths of at least 24 people at the hands of security forces. Gonzalez has stayed out of public view, while Machado has appeared at sporadic rallies seeking to keep up the pressure on Maduro.
Machado tried to put a positive spin on Gonzalez’s departure, assuring Venezuelans that he would return on January 10, 2025 for a swearing-in ceremony that would mark the start of the next presidential term.
“His life was in danger, and the increasing threats, summons, arrest warrants and even attempts at blackmail and coercion to which he has been subjected, demonstrate that the regime has no scruples or limits in its obsession with silencing him and trying to subdue him,” Machado wrote on Sunday in a message via the social network X, formerly Twitter.
Gonzalez’s candidacy came after a career as a diplomat that began as an assistant to the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States. He was later posted to Belgium and El Salvador, and served as Caracas’ ambassador to Algeria.
His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during the early years of the presidency of Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor. More recently, he worked as an international relations consultant and authored a historical work on Venezuela’s foreign minister during World War II.
His years in El Salvador and Algeria coincided with periods of armed conflict in both countries. For a time, his whereabouts were tracked by residents of El Salvador, and he received calls to his home to intimidate him.
During the election campaign, Maduro claimed, without presenting evidence, that González was recruited as a CIA agent during the Cold War, which coincided with strong US military involvement in the Central American country.
González had just returned to Caracas from a trip to Europe to visit a daughter and grandchildren when opposition leaders approached him with the idea of becoming a candidate.
The moderate tone and poker face he adopted as a diplomat were in stark contrast to the boisterous, self-centered politicians Venezuelans have long been accustomed to. Maduro and his allies took his conciliatory tone as a sign of weakness, but such language was one of his many appeals to many Venezuelans.
“Enough shouting, enough insults,” Gonzalez told his supporters. “It’s time to come together.”
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2024-09-10 16:33:53