Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado issued an open call for a transfer of power Saturday, urging the military to abandon Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s government and recognize opposition-backed candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez as president after the U.S. said Maduro had been captured.<\/p>\n
Machado\u2019s statement came hours after President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro following what he described as ‘large-scale’ military strikes targeting the Venezuelan government. Trump said Maduro and his wife were flown out of the country, a move that would mark the most direct U.S. military action against a Latin American head of state in decades.<\/p>\n
‘The hour of freedom has arrived,’ wrote in a post on X. ‘This is the hour of the citizens. Those of us who risked everything for democracy on July 28th. Those of us who elected Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez Urrutia as the legitimate President of Venezuela, who must immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces by all the officers and soldiers who comprise it.’<\/p>\n
It remained unclear Saturday whether senior commanders have shifted allegiance or whether the opposition has secured control of state institutions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Machado also called on Venezuelans inside the country to remain ‘vigilant, active and organized,’ signaling that further instructions would be communicated through official opposition channels. To Venezuelans abroad, she urged immediate mobilization to pressure foreign governments to recognize a new leadership in Caracas.<\/p>\n
The U.S. conducted strikes on Caracas early Saturday morning and took Maduro and his wife into custody and flew them to New York to face drug trafficking charges.<\/p>\n
Machado and Gonz\u00e1lez have repeatedly argued that the July 28 presidential election was stolen, pointing to an opposition-run parallel vote count that they say shows Gonz\u00e1lez won by a wide margin.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s electoral authorities, which are controlled by Maduro allies, declared him the winner with just under 52% of the vote, compared with roughly 43% for Gonz\u00e1lez. The government has rejected allegations of fraud.<\/p>\n
The opposition, however, says it collected and published tally sheets from polling stations nationwide showing Gonz\u00e1lez received about two-thirds of the vote, compared with roughly 30% for Maduro \u2014 a claim cited by several foreign governments that declined to recognize the official results.<\/p>\n
Maduro\u2019s government has refused to release detailed precinct-level data to independently verify the outcome, further fueling accusations that the election did not reflect the will of voters.<\/p>\n
While Gonz\u00e1lez is the opposition-backed presidential candidate, Machado has remained the dominant figure in Venezuela\u2019s opposition movement. Machado won the opposition\u2019s primary by a landslide before being barred from running by Maduro\u2019s government, forcing the coalition to rally behind Gonz\u00e1lez as a substitute candidate.<\/p>\n
Throughout the campaign, Gonz\u00e1lez publicly acknowledged Machado as the movement\u2019s leader, with Machado continuing to direct strategy, messaging and voter mobilization efforts. Machado has remained the public face of the opposition, while Gonz\u00e1lez has largely played a formal, constitutional role tied to the presidency.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado issued an open call for a transfer of power Saturday, urging the military to abandon Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s government and recognize opposition-backed candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez as president after the U.S. said Maduro had been captured. Machado\u2019s statement came hours after President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}