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CARACAS – Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado vowed Monday to remain in Venezuela a day after her colleague and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia took up asylum in Spain claiming post-election repression.
“I have decided to stay in Venezuela and take part in the struggle from here while he (Gonzalez Urrutia) does it from abroad,” Machado, who is in hiding, told reporters via videoconference.
Gonzalez Urrutia arrived in Madrid late Sunday after weeks in hiding following a July 28 presidential election that the opposition insists he won but was claimed by incumbent strongman Nicolas Maduro.
“We all know that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia is the elected president of Venezuela… whether he is in Venezuela or anywhere else in the world,” said Machado.
The fact that he is now abroad “does not change anything: legitimacy is maintained, the strategy is the same,” she insisted.
After his arrival in Spain, Gonzalez Urrutia said he had decided to leave “so that things can change and so we can build a new stage for Venezuela.”
Machado had said he left the country because “his life was in danger”
“Only the policy of dialogue will enable us to reunite as compatriots,” Gonzalez Urrutia wrote in a letter addressed to Venezuelans and posted on social network X.
“I have taken this decision thinking of Venezuela and that our destiny as a country cannot, must not, be that of a conflict of pain and suffering.”
Gonzalez Urrutia had replaced Machado on the ballot at the last minute after she was prevented from running by institutions loyal to Maduro, accused by observers of human rights violations.
Venezuela’s regime-loyal CNE electoral authority declared Maduro the election winner but the opposition cried foul and much of the international community has refused to accept the result.