Venezuelan opposition candidate González won't appear before court and questions election audit

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González will not appear before the country's high court Wednesday for a hearing related to an election audit requested by President Nicolás Maduro, his campaign said.

Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal of Justice on Monday ordered González, who represented the main opposition parties, Maduro and the other eight candidates in the July 28 presidential election to attend hearings scheduled through Friday.

The hearings follow days of global criticism of Maduro and his loyal National Electoral Council over the election results. Electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner but have yet to produce voting tallies. Meanwhile, the opposition claims to have collected records from more than 80% of the 30,000 electronic voting machines nationwide showing he lost.

González was first on the list, but in a statement posted on social media, he questioned the legality of the proceedings and expressed serious concerns over his safety.

“I will put at risk not only my freedom but, more importantly, the will of the Venezuelan people expressed on July 28, 2024 and the gigantic effort of the Venezuelans who have participated in this process so that we could obtain evidence of the vote validly cast by the citizens,” he said.

It is unclear whether González could face legal consequences over his decision to not appear for the scheduled hearing.

Judge Caryslia Rodríguez, president of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and its electoral court, during a nationally televised hearing on Monday warned that failure to appear would entail the corresponding consequences provided by law but did not give any details.

González's name and photo appeared three times on the July 28 ballot, each for every party he represented: Democratic Unity Table, A New Time Party and Movement for Venezuela. Although González said he would not appear at the tribunal, representatives of the three parties did so.

"We faced an exhaustive interrogation separately,” Manuel Rosales, founder of A New Time Party, told reporters about Wednesday's hearing.

Meanwhile, José Simón Calzadilla, of Movement for Venezuela, described the court's audit process as “irregular” and insisted that government institutions must “put themselves at the service of transparency" and demand that the electoral council comply with its obligation to release detailed results.

“We left this high court with more doubts than when we arrived, and it was not made clear to us what we were doing or what this questioning by the magistrates was for,” he said.

Maduro, who appeared 13 times on the ballot, is last on the list of hearings Rodríguez announced.

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