Venezuela defence minister pledges ‘absolute loyalty’ to Maduro
Country’s defence chief pledges to stand by Maduro’s side following calls by opposition to join ‘side of the people’.
Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino has promised the country’s army will maintain “absolute loyalty” to the government of Nicolas Maduro following an electionin which he was declared victorious.
“We ratify our absolute loyalty to citizen Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Padrino said on Tuesday during a broadcast by state television, where he was flanked by the top brass of the military and the police.
These “fatuous and irrational calls seek to break our unity and institutionality, but they will never achieve it,” he added.
Padrino’s statement on Tuesday followed a letter from opposition leaders Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado earlier this week, calling on the armed forces to “stand at the side of the people”.
The call by the opposition leaders was interpreted by the government as a call for defection, prompting a criminal probe against them.
“Fear is not going to paralyse us, we are going to overcome it as we have done until now and we will not leave the streets,” Machado said in an audio message posted on social media on Tuesday.
Tensions have continued to simmer in the South American country, a week after Maduro claimed victory, despite many countries in the region casting doubt on his claims and asking for greater transparency over the results of the July 28 vote.
The Maduro government responded to the protests by cracking down on members of the opposition, and Attorney General Tarek Saab announced a criminal probe against Gonzalez and Machado following the publication of their letter directed towards the military on Monday.
In a social media post on Monday, Saab said the opposition had “falsely announced a winner of the presidential election other than the one proclaimed by the National Electoral Council, the only body qualified to do so” and called on the “police and military officials to disobey the laws”.
The opposition allege Maduro was defeated by a margin of about 2-1. It claims Gonzalez won more than 6 million votes, compared to 2.7 million won by Maduro, and have published online a copy of ballots from 30,000 voting machines.
The government says it also has copies of the ballots but has not yet published them, nor has the country’s electoral authority, whose website has been down since the early hours of July 29.