Venezuela’s presidential contender flees, and hopes for democracy dim

BOGOTA, Colombia — The news that Edmundo González, Venezuela’s opposition candidate, had fled the country on a Spanish air force plane this weekend took the country, and the world, by surprise.

The past year has been marked by months of repression leading up to a disputed presidential election. The vote was followed by a brutal crackdown by the authoritarian government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Still, many Venezuelans held out hope that through a negotiated exit the socialist-inspired administration might step aside and let González, a soft-spoken former diplomat, assume power.

His departure Saturday narrowed that slim possibility even further. And it came as Venezuelan security forces surrounded the Argentine diplomatic residence in Caracas where six top opposition leaders have been taking shelter since March.

Maduro has solidified his hold on power, some analysts say, even if many Venezuelans and governments around the world have not recognized his claim that he was reelected to the presidency in the July 28 election.

Efforts by countries in the region, including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, to broker a resolution to the conflict have gone nowhere, and the opposition, which has called on the global community to rally behind it, has seemingly few options.

González, a 75-year-old grandfather of four, was thrown into the race in March as a stand-in for popular opposition leader María Corina Machado after the country’s top court barred her from the presidential ballot.

Machado, who won a primary election last year organized by the opposition, has inspired a nearly religious fervor among her supporters, but for the government, her decades-long record as an unwavering opponent of the 25-year-old socialist system made her a threat.

Many analysts saw González’s candidacy as a hopeful if unexpected turn of events, and polls indicated that the opposition candidate was likely to win — if the vote was free and fair.

On election day, however, Maduro claimed victory without releasing a breakdown of results; he has yet to do so. The opposition has published thousands of receipts from voting machines showing that González won decisively.

Maduro has faced widespread domestic and international criticism over his victory claim.

His security forces have detained around 2,000 people, from opposition activists to ordinary citizens, over even small signs of dissent. Two dozen Venezuelans died in protests in the days right after the election. Last Monday, a Venezuelan court that focuses on crimes related to terrorism issued an arrest warrant for González, accusing him of electoral sabotage.

On Sunday, the opposition released an audio recording of the candidate explaining his decision to flee the country.

“I wanted to inform you that this morning, I arrived in Madrid,” González said. “My departure from Caracas was surrounded by episodes of pressure, coercion and threats of not allowing my departure. I trust that soon we will continue the struggle to achieve freedom and the recovery of democracy in Venezuela.”

A day earlier, Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, said that the government had granted him permission to leave the country “for the sake of tranquility and political peace.”

The plans of Machado were unclear. She has been in hiding since the election, though she has made a handful of public appearances.

In a statement Sunday, she said that González had left because his life was in danger, but that she would keep fighting “until the end,” as her campaign slogan put it.

In an interview last month, a top opposition leader, Perkins Rocha, said, “My knowledge of María Corina Machado is to have the certainty that she would never abandon the country.” He was later arrested by men wearing hoods and taken to an unknown location.

Machado now finds herself in the position of being the most prominent opposition figure in a country where all of her recent predecessors have been imprisoned or forced into exile, said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan professor of international affairs at the University of Denver.

The Maduro government’s strategy, he said, is to force out the loudest voices of dissent, then portray them as weak and illegitimate.

“It makes it easier for Maduro to write the narrative about the opposition,” Rodríguez said. “They want to paint them as not being willing to fight, not being brave, not being strong.”

The standoff at the Argentine residence highlighted the diminishing chances that the opposition might compel the Maduro government to negotiate a resolution to the political crisis.

Brazil assumed custody of the residence last month after Maduro ordered diplomats from Argentina and other countries that disputed his election victory claim to leave the country. Many had placed their hopes for a negotiated transition in regional powers like Brazil with leftist leaders who have been friendly toward Maduro.

But on Saturday, Venezuela’s foreign ministry announced that it was revoking Brazil’s custody of the Argentine residence because, the ministry said, it was being used to plan “terrorist activities” and to plot the assassination of Maduro.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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