Antonio Ledezma, who was the metropolitan mayor of Caracas until 2015, stated yesterday in Madrid that Edmundo González is now the "elected president of Venezuela" and that any move made by Nicolás Maduro will now be as an "opposition". "We have done our job as the Venezuelan people, which is to win the elections and demonstrate the validity of the process thanks to the published records. Now it is up to the international community to recognize the victory and the president elected by the majority. We demand a peaceful transition phase. Maduro has the bullets, but we have the votes."
The senator and deputy, who fled from Venezuela and is in exile in Madrid, affirms that "the QR code of each electoral record is inviolable. These records have been seen by presidents and prime ministers from around the world. They are the same records that Maduro does not present. The military also know about these documents. They witnessed what happened because they were present at the voting tables. Many of them were part of the process of obtaining the records, as they disobeyed the order to prevent us from having a copy. That's why more than half of the detainees are military."
The Venezuelan politician did not hold back on his criticism of the electoral fraud or its perpetrator: "Maduro is the tropical version of Adolf Hitler. A figure who in many years of dictatorship has not built a hospital, but claims that in five days he will build two prisons. That gives us an idea of this deranged individual. They didn't even care about appearances in the fraud. They can't add two plus two and tell us it's 12. They don't present the records and proudly admit to having over 2,000 detainees, many of them minors imprisoned for terrorism, just like they want to do with Edmundo and María Corina."
Ledezma and Estefanía Parra, international coordinator of Voluntad Popular, wanted to remember Freddy Superlano, a political prisoner of Chavismo, who was detained a few days ago by the regime. "We don't know if Freddy is alive or dead. We demand proof of life from the Maduro regime. And like him, there are many journalists and military personnel imprisoned."
Today, there were rumors about Lula da Silva, Petro, and López Obrador proposing a dialogue with Maduro, where María Corina Machado would not be allowed to attend. The goal would be to promote another electoral process or buy time. Ledezma responds: "Can you imagine negotiations about Real Madrid without Florentino Pérez? There will be no negotiations about the presidency of Venezuela without María Corina Machado. The only possible dialogue is about how Maduro leaves and transfers power. We all know how agreements signed with Chavismo end. We have the example in Barbados. What was agreed there was violated as soon as they left the table."
There will be no more processes. "Maduro has already lost the elections. We have given him an advantage of 4.5 million votes, from all of us in exile who couldn't vote, and still we have defeated him," Ledezma asserts.
Regarding the role of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the former mayor of Caracas states that his silence at this moment "is deafening". Everyone in Spain knows the situation in Venezuela. If you talk to Aznar, you don't know if you're talking to a Spaniard or someone from Maracaibo. If you talk to Felipe González, you don't know if you're talking to a Sevillian or a Caraqueño. They know in detail what is happening. But as for Zapatero... I prefer to remember the one who released political prisoners than the one who, by saying nothing, ends up being complicit in what is happening.
Now Maduro is going to the Supreme Court of Justice. "Why would someone who claims to be the winner go to a Justice Tribunal chosen by him and favorable to him? He is not going to claim anything. He just wants to set a precedent to apply it over and over again," Ledezma concludes.