CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called on the world on Thursday to recognize candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as president-elect after disputed elections in the oil-rich country. President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the July 28 vote, but many members of the international community refused to recognize the result. But they also stopped short of accepting Gonzalez Urrutia as president-elect, instead calling on Caracas to release detailed poll results to support their claim that Maduro had won a third term. “The world knows that Edmundo Gonzalez is the president-elect and Maduro has been defeated by a landslide,” Machado said during a virtual appearance. “I think it has definitely reached a point where we have to move forward … and that’s when Edmundo Gonzalez should be recognized as the elected president of Venezuela.” The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize Maduro’s claimed victory without seeing detailed election results. The opposition released its own voting records, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia won 67 percent of the vote. Venezuela’s electoral authority said it could not provide a full breakdown of the results of the July 28 election, blaming a cyber attack on its systems. Observers said there was no evidence of such hacking. “They won’t do it because the results would show that we won,” Machado said. The UN Security Council met on Thursday to discuss the situation at the request of Ecuador, which recognized Gonzalez Urrutia as the “legitimate winner” of the vote in early August.
