Cuban-American Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar sent a message to the Venezuelan Defense Minister, General Vladimir Padrino López, in which she urged him to respect the will of the people and acknowledge the victory of the opposition.
"You hold the future of freedom in Venezuela in your hands. Imprisoning María Corina Machado and Edmundo González or sending tanks against your own people who are only demanding that the election results be respected is a great mistake that your children, your grandchildren, and your generations will pay for," expressed the representative from Florida.
For Salazar, the only honorable way is to listen to the neighboring countries, including the United States, who demand that Nicolás Maduro's regime "show the vote numbers or else concede victory to the opposition."
"Listen to the voice of your Venezuelan people, take the right side of history, do it well for your own benefit and that of your future generations, beyond the benefit it will bring to that Venezuelan people who deserve it so much and to whom you belong," the congresswoman stated.
These statements arise in a growing climate of instability in Venezuela, where early on Monday the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that Maduro had won the election by just over 704,114 votes against González Urrutia, the candidate of the majority opposition coalition, with still 20% of the electoral records left to total.
This translates to 2,394,268 votes, the destination of which is unknown and could change the final results.
In addition, María Corina Machado, from the opposition alliance, stated that González Urrutia won the Presidency by a wide margin and created a website where she uploaded 73% of the electoral records to reinforce her claim.
After strong criticism over the apparent theft of the election and after several governments recognized González Urrutia as the legitimate elected president, Nicolás Maduro demanded that countries such as Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay withdraw their "representatives in Venezuelan territory."
According to an official statement, Maduro also decided to "withdraw all diplomatic personnel from the missions" in these seven Latin American countries that criticized his murky re-election.
The Venezuelan people continue to take to the streets of the country demanding that Maduro leave and respect the election results.
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