CARACAS, Venezuela: Former Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has fled into exile after being granted asylum in Spain, dealing a blow to millions who had pinned their hopes on his campaign to end two decades of one-party rule.
The surprise exit of the man whom the Venezuelan opposition and several foreign governments consider the legitimate winner of the July presidential race was announced Saturday night by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.
He said the government decided to grant Gonzalez a safe passage out of the country, just days after ordering his arrest, to help restore “peace and political tranquility in the country.”
Neither Gonzalez nor opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have commented.
Meanwhile, Spain’s centre-left government said the decision to leave Venezuela was González’s alone and he left on a plane sent by the country’s air force.
“Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” said Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares on the social network X.
Gonzalez, a 75-year-old former diplomat, was the last candidate to stand in the election when Machado was barred from running. His campaign, previously unknown to most Venezuelans, quickly sparked hopes among millions of Venezuelans desperate for change after a decade of economic freefall.
Although President Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of the July election, most Western governments have yet to recognise his victory and are demanding that authorities publish a breakdown of the vote. Meanwhile, tally sheets collected by opposition volunteers on more than two-thirds of electronic voting machines indicate that Gonzalez won by a margin of more than two to one.
Voting records have long been considered the definitive proof of election results in Venezuela. In previous presidential elections, the National Electoral Council published the results from each of the more than 30,000 voting machines online, but the Maduro-controlled body did not release any data this time, blaming an alleged cyberattack organized by his opponents from North Macedonia.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, requested Gonzalez’s arrest after he failed to show up three times in connection with a criminal investigation into what he considers an act of electoral sabotage.
Saab told reporters that voting records shared online by the opposition were falsified and an attempt to undermine the National Electoral Council.
Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which observed the election at the invitation of the Maduro government, determined that the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility. In a critical statement on the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim of victory but said that voting records posted online appear to exhibit all of the original security features.
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