(25 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Caracas, Venezuela – 25 July 2024
1. Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado, arriving at news conference
2. Various of Machado and González at news conference
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Edmundo González, opposition presidential candidate:
“They may illegally have resources, they may have control of the national electoral council, they may have control of the Supreme Court of Justice, they may have an Attorney General’s Office that applauds their abuses, but we have the love, support and enthusiasm of the vast majority of Venezuelans who want a change in peace.”
4. Wide of González and Machado
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Maria Corina Machado, opposition leader:
“This moment we are living is the closing of a cycle and the beginning of a new era. The closing of a cycle of chaos to begin an era of order and stability and security, the closing of a cycle of violence to advance in an era of peace, of respect.”
6. González and Machado hugging each other and raising their hands
STORYLINE:
Venezuela’s opposition figures urged voters to bring in a ‘new era’ in the country when they elect the nation’s president in an election on Sunday.
During a news conference on Thursday, Maria Corina Machado said "this moment we are living is the closing of a cycle and the beginning of a new era."
Machado is not allowed to be a candidate in Sunday’s hotly contested presidential election.
But fueled by the ruling party’s refusal to let her run, she has become a symbol of hope, courage and perseverance for millions of Venezuelans inside and outside their country.
The once political outcast is their freedom fighter and the main threat to President Nicolás Maduro’s reelection aspirations.
Machado’s claim to opposition leader was cemented in October, when she won the presidential primary of the Unitary Platform coalition, the main opposition faction, with more than 90% of support.
Her status as frontrunner prompted other candidates to endorse her ahead of the contest or drop out, including a two-time candidate who nearly defeated Maduro in 2013.
Her meteoric rise was also aided by the void left by other opposition leaders — Machado adversaries included — who went into exile.
Throughout the presidential campaign, which officially began earlier this month, President Nicolas Maduro toughened his criticism of Machado, including by referring to her, without mentioning her name, as a “decrepit old woman of the ideology of hate and fascism."
He also accused her of wanting to “fill the country with hatred and violence.”
Unable to overcome the ban blocking her candidacy, Machado initially chose a college professor as her substitute for Sunday’s ballot.
But when the academic was also sidelined by government moves, Machado threw her support behind former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
They have campaigned together over the past couple of months.
At Thursday’s news conference, Gonzalez said the incumbent government "may illegally have resources, they may have control of the national electoral council, they may have control of the Supreme Court of Justice, they may have an Attorney General’s Office that applauds their abuses, but we have the love, support and enthusiasm of the vast majority of Venezuelans who want a change in peace.”
AP Video by Lucas Dumphreys
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