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January 10, 2025 – 17:46
After being sworn in this Friday for a third term as president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro mocked the exiled opponent Edmundo González Urrutia, who accuses him of electoral fraud and expressed his intention to return to the country to take power.
«Who fell there? “Did Edmundo arrive?” Maduro said after hearing a noise during his speech before Parliament, controlled by the ruling party.
“Since I’m waiting for him to arrive, I’m nervous,” he added in a mocking tone of voice.
Exiled in Spain in September after an arrest warrant against him, González Urrutia claims victory in the July 28 elections, in which Maduro was proclaimed re-elected by the National Electoral Council (CNE) without having published so far detailed scrutiny, as required by law.
-González Urrutia promised to return “soon” to Venezuela and asked the Armed Forces for support to assume power in Maduro’s place.
In search of international support, the 75-year-old diplomat is on an international tour that has taken him to Argentina, Uruguay, the United States, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
“We will all see each other very soon in Caracas in freedom,” González Urrutia declared on Thursday at the government palace in Santo Domingo, after meeting with the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, who declared himself “an ally.”
The opponent is accompanied by former leaders of the IDEA Group (Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas), among them the Colombian Andrés Pastrana and the Mexicans Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, who claimed that they were seeking to coordinate a plane to take them to Venezuela with him.
“I will wait for you at the airport,” warned the Venezuelan Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello. “If they set foot in Venezuela, they will be detained.”
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