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Venezuela opposition candidate issued summons over vote dispute / Photo: © AFP/File
Venezuela opposition candidate issued summons over vote dispute
Venezuelan prosecutors have summoned opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia for questioning Monday as part of a criminal investigation following the country's disputed presidential election claimed by strongman Nicolas Maduro.
"Citizen Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia" is summoned "on August 26 at 10 am for an interview," prosecutors said Saturday, as part of an investigation into the opposition's publishing of electoral records which it claims show Maduro was clearly defeated.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a Maduro ally, had foreshadowed the summoning Friday, saying Gonzalez Urrutia would have to explain his "disobedience" of the authorities.
Saab said the opposition's website, where it has posted a detailed breakdown of election results, had "usurped" the powers of the Maduro-aligned CNE electoral council.
The CNE declared Maduro the winner of the July 28 election with 52 percent of votes cast, but has refused to publish detailed results, claiming hackers had corrupted the data.
An observer mission from the US-based Carter Center said there was no evidence of a cyber attack.
The polling station-level results published by the opposition show that Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old retired diplomat, defeated Maduro with 67 percent of the vote.
Venezuela's top court, widely regarded as loyal to Maduro, on Thursday certified his reelection to a third, six-year term, and reprimanded Gonzalez Urrutia for not appearing as ordered.
The opposition candidate refused to attend the hearings, saying doing so would risk his freedom.
Maduro has called for the arrest of Gonzalez Urrutia, who has not been seen in public since he led a march on July 30 with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
"He is going to have to show his face," Saab said Friday.
Machado is also in hiding, but attended a mass rally in Caracas on August 18.
She has demanded that Maduro enter into transition negotiations, which he has rejected outright.
On Saturday, she said in a televised Fox News interview that Maduro had unleashed a brutal "campaign of terror" after his defeat.
She pledged to "keep on fighting, peacefully protesting, increasing pressure domestically and internationally, until Maduro understands that his best option is to accept the terms of a negotiation that would bring us to a transition to democracy."
Protests following the disputed vote left 27 people dead, including two military members, and nearly 200 injured.
More than 2,400 people have been arrested in the wake of the election, including some high-profile opposition members.
The United States, European Union, several Latin American countries and multilateral bodies have refused to recognize Maduro's victory claim without seeing the detailed results.
Mexico, Brazil and Colombia have been promoting negotiations to find a way out of the Venezuelan crisis.
Following the Supreme Court ruling, the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell on Saturday reiterated that the CNE is the Venezuelan "body legally and constitutionally responsible" for publishing results.
"Only complete and independently verifiable results will be accepted and recognized to ensure that the will of the Venezuelan people is respected," he said in a statement.
"The Venezuelan people have to decide their own destiny. Their will must prevail."
J.Peterson--SFF
