Edmundo Gonzalez He denounced “very tense hours” of “coercion and threats” from the regime before signing the document in which he “accepted” the dictator’s victory, Nicolas Maduroin the elections of which he had until then proclaimed himself the legitimate winner.
But Jorge RodriguezThe president of the Chavista Assembly denies it and places the Spanish ambassador as “exceptional witness”. According to a senior Maduro official, the opposition leader signed the document because he wanted to. “It was a capitulation” and “a surrender,” he said on Friday.
But did he give in “without constraint”, as Chavismo claims?
The Spanish government says it will not reveal anything that González Urrutia is unwilling to explain. What is your right and responsibility to, “free like in Spain”say or not what you think.
But the truth is that until now he has not given a press conference and has not been accessible to the media. Only four written or pre-recorded video statements They helped him explain and qualify his position as new information emerged.
And the other actor who speaks, the Chavista regime, which he uses as evidence of his statements is addressed to the Spanish government, in the person of its ambassador in Caracas, Ramon Santospresent at Edmundo’s meetings with the Rodriguez brothers.
What did Santos see and hear? He will not say. His instructions were express: facilitate these meetings. And the slogan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is that it is the asylum seeker who must explain himself, “if he wants to”.
The photo
During his previous 38 days, sheltering in the Dutch embassy, Maduro’s emissaries did not cross the threshold. But Yes, he was subjected to “blackmail and threats”depending on your environment, by phone, by e-mailand through the dictator’s bravado on television. In addition to Three demands of the prosecutionaccused of crimes of treason.
The truth is that a photo shows the Spanish ambassador in the same room where Chavista henchmen Jorge and Delcy Rodriguez exchange documents with Edmundo.
The brother of the vice president of the unexplained suitcases in Barajas assures that “They were the ones looking for us” and that González Urrutia wanted so much to end his agony that he wanted to “go to bed with everything resolved”.
This would correspond to the version of the Spanish government, which claims that the ambassador did not participate in anything and that he simply carried out express orders from Jose Manuel Albares: that Edmundo felt “safe and free” to meet whoever he wanted and make whatever decision he wanted.
And this could also correspond to what was reported by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Caspar Veldkamp, that in a document sent to his Parliament he assures that Edmundo has left his embassy “decided to leave the country” and to accept the offer of “asylum in Spain”. [Documento en PDF]
This would exonerate Ambassador Santos from accusations of “complicity” by the Popular Party with Maduro’s “coup.” Something similar is happening with the statement released Thursday night by Edmundo González, in which he exonerates the Spanish government from any coercion.
Hours or weeks
But if “Spain did not force”, Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez in the presence of the ambassador Spanish? Because that is what was inferred from the opposition leader’s previous statement.
It is assumed that the documents he signed in front of the Spanish diplomat were the “pass” be allowed to leave the country and seek asylum.
And the truth is that Edmundo implied that he signed these documents after these “very tense hours” of “coercion and blackmail” by a regime “that lives on lies” and “always uses dirty tricks.”
Hoursnot days or weeks, very tense.
All of this also seems real, given that all parties claim that the document had Privacy PolicyThe regime broke it on Wednesday by disclosing it to albertonews.coma site supposedly pro-opposition.
He thus broke the silence that had already fueled dissensions within the opposition and among Spanish and European political leaders. And he managed to break any democratic consensus when Jorge Rodríguez called the Spanish ambassador as a witness: “Go ask him”.
The Ambassador’s Report
The scenario of silence, until then, forced Edmundo to arrive in Spain the next day, Sunday, September 8, and to keep everything quiet. He only publishes written notes, short and full of good words. He stopped calling himself a “winner” and called for “dialogue” and a “democratic solution.”nothing else.
Ten days later, this Wednesday, we learned why: he had signed this paper by “renunciating”, according to Delcy’s brother, Maduro’s vice-president. sanctioned by the EU as responsible for “serious crimes against fundamental rights Venezuelans.”
The 48 hours or so that Edmundo González spent at the Spanish embassy in Caracas gave two meetings with the Rodriguez brothers. Jorge, responsible for manage the opposition leader’s crisis, assures that it was González Urrutia who asked them to leave the country and He demanded the safety of his property and his daughter.
But (and here is the key to everything) if this were so, there is only the option that had until then proclaimed itself “winner of the presidential elections of July 28”. “surrendered” for the pressures suffered remotelyby taking refuge in the Dutch diplomatic legation, or by those exercised in person in the Spanish diplomatic legation.
Only he can explain it. Or the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, whose written report to Foreign Affairswith the details of what he saw and heard, nothing is yet known.
