Maria Corina Machado, a fearless 57-year-old with rock-star appeal and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a soft-spoken 75-year-old retired diplomat, are the two faces of the opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s iron-fisted regime.
On Thursday, they were awarded the European Union’s top human rights prize for having “fearlessly upheld those values that millions of Venezuelans and this parliament hold so dear: justice, democracy and the rule of law,” EU parliament chief Roberta Metsola said.
– Machado, the ‘liberator’ –
Machado, who has been living in hiding since Venezuela’s disputed July 28 election, inspires devotion among opposition supporters in Venezuela, who hail her as a “libertadora” — an allusion to Venezuelan independence hero Simon “The Liberator” Bolivar.
Unlike Gonzalez Urrutia, who fled to Spain in September after a warrant was issued for his arrest, she chose to stay in Venezuela to continue to lead resistance to Maduro’s regime despite many dissidents being thrown in jail.
In a video interview with AFP from an unknown location in late September she ruled out leaving the country.
“I am where I feel most useful for the struggle in Venezuela,” she said.
Machado was the red-hot favorite to win the July 28 election before being barred from running against Maduro by authorities loyal to the regime. So, Gonzalez Urrutia stood in for her at the last minute.
An engineer by training, Machado entered politics in 2002 at the head of an association Sumate (Join us) pushing for a referendum to recall Maduro’s mentor, iconic late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Machado was accused of treason over the referendum call and received death threats, prompting her to send her two young sons and daughter to live in the United States.
She reemerged to electrify the presidential campaign late last year, sweeping the board in opposition primaries with 90 percent of the votes cast — around three million voters.
After being barred from running she acted as spokesperson for her stand-in, Gonzalez Urrutia, crisscrossing the country to get out the vote for him with rousing speeches at rallies thronged by Venezuelans desperate for change.
Machado promised an end to 25 years of increasingly repressive socialist rule, marked in recent years by a severe economic crisis which has prompted seven million people to emigrate.
“We’re going to liberate the country and bring our children home,” she vowed.
It was her idea to collect and collate the election results announced by each polling station, which the opposition then used to claim victory by Urrutia with 67 percent of the vote.
That proved a masterstroke: faced with Maduro’s failure to provide detailed election results backing his claim to have won 52 percent of the vote, the US and many European and Latin American countries refused to recognize his victory,
After the election Machado adopted cloak-and-dagger resistance tactics, popping up unannounced on the back of a truck on a street corner to give a speech before fleeing on the back of a motorcycle to avoid arrest.
– Gonzalez Urrutia, the diplomat –
Gonzalez Urrutia was a soft-spoken grandfather who spurned the spotlight when he was agreed to become the last-minute opposition candidate in April.
The retired diplomat accepted his new role reluctantly after other potential stand-ins for Machado were barred from running or pulled out.
“I never, never, never imagined I would be in this position,” the former ambassador to Algeria and Argentina told AFP shortly after his nomination.
“This is my contribution to the democratic cause,” he said.
Described by those who know him as “decent,” “intelligent” and a “democrat,” he was credited with building the Democratic Unity Platform opposition coalition into a major force from behind the scenes.
He insisted he had no ambitions of power, however, and continued to refer to Machado as “the leader of the opposition.”
Gonzalez Urrutia studied international relations at university and had postings in Belgium and Washington before becoming an ambassador. He has written several books on Venezuela.
On the campaign trail, he took a more moderate line than Machado, calling for reconciliation between supporters and opponents of “chavismo” — the left-wing populist doctrine espoused by the rabidly anti-American Chavez and his hand-picked successor Maduro.
In September, he fled to Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest, marking a severe blow to the opposition.
Gonzalez Urrutia said he decided to leave after receiving “extreme threats” to him and his family.
pgf-cb/sms
