Venezuela’s attorney general, seen as an ally of strongman Nicolas Maduro, said Friday he would summon opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia in an investigation into his claims to be the true winner of presidential elections last month.
“In the coming hours… Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia will be summoned by this public prosecutor’s office… to make statements about his authorship” of a web page featuring voting results the opposition says disprove Maduro’s claim to reelection victory, said Tarek William Saab.
Venezuela’s CNE electoral council, also seen as friendly to Maduro, had declared him the winner of a July 28 poll with 52 percent of votes cast, but without providing a detailed breakdown of results.
The opposition says results at the polling station level show Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old retired diplomat, defeated Maduro by a wide margin.
It published these online, prompting the investigation by Saab who says the opposition had “usurped” the powers of the CNE to release election results.
Saab said Friday Gonzalez will have to explain his “disobedience” of state authorities.
Gonzalez Urrutia, whose arrest Maduro has called for, has not been seen in public since leading a July 30 opposition march.
The United States, European Union, several Latin American countries and multilateral bodies have refused to recognize Maduro’s victory claim without seeing the detailed results.
Protests in the hours following the vote left 25 people dead, nearly 200 injured and more than 2,400 under arrest.
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