Venezuelan President-elect Edmundo González selects María Corina Machado as his vice president

President-elect Edmundo González Urrutia announced that he will appoint opposition leader María Corina Machado as his vice president once he returns to Venezuela and assumes power on January 10.

“My intention is to be in Venezuela to take the office to which I was elected by more than seven million Venezuelans. If voting abroad had been allowed, that number would have been even higher,” González said in an interview. with the El País Spanish newspaper.

When asked about the possibility of Machado having formal participation in his administration, González responded with a firm “of course yes. (As) executive vice president of the Republic.”

He was also asked if he planned to be sworn in in his current exile, to which he responded: “No. That is clear: I am going to be in Venezuela” on Jan. 10, 2025.

González explained that his departure from the country to Spain was temporary and that from the first moment he was clear that he would return.

“My goal is to take possession of the position for which I was elected and, from then on, make the decisions that have to be made; among others, the appointment of the government team,” he indicated.

Machado was chosen as an opposition candidate in the Venezuelan opposition primaries, but was later disqualified from holding public office, although this did not prevent her from campaigning alongside González, exiled since September in Spain due to multiple threats from the Nicolás Maduro regime.

To circumvent Maduro’s draconian election ban against then candidate Corina Machado, the former diplomat took the reins of her campaign earlier this year.

The opposition has since denounced fraud in the July 28 elections after the regime controlled National Electoral Council (CNE), declared Maduro the winner without showing detailed voting results.

The opposition claimed González Urrutia's victory, ensuring that they had 80% of the copies of the minutes that demonstrated his victory, which were disseminated on a website.

The protests that broke out after the elections left 28 dead, 200 injured and more than 2,400 detained.

At the beginning of December, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan, demanded that the Maduro regime guarantee the rights of opposition civilians detained for political reasons or for participating in peaceful demonstrations.

The prosecutor added that the regime also has the obligation to facilitate access to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

“This had been previously promised to me in writing, but it has not yet materialized,” he said.

Likewise, he emphasized the lack of “concrete implementation of laws and practices” that protect the rights of civilians and warned that the prosecutor's investigations “are still ongoing and active.”