CARACAS (Reuters) – Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez will be asked to testify about an opposition website where voting data is posted, attorney general Tarek Saab said on Friday.
The move is the latest in a series of ruling party actions that the opposition and human rights groups have characterized as a crackdown on dissent following a disputed presidential election.
“In the coming hours the citizen Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia will be cited by this Public Ministry on the basis of the ongoing investigation, so he can give testimony about his responsibility, where he declares himself responsible for the webpage which is usurping…the virtue and the jurisdiction that only corresponds to the electoral authorities,” Saab told journalists at a press conference in Caracas.
Venezuela’s national electoral authority and its top court have named President Nicolas Maduro as the victor of the July 28 election with just over half of the votes, but the ballot box-level tallies posted by the opposition show a resounding victory for Gonzalez.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Vivian Sequera; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb)
