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00:00Now, the Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González has vowed to continue the fight
00:05for democracy after being granted asylum in Spain.
00:09He fled Venezuela on Sunday after weeks in hiding amid political turmoil over the July
00:16election results.
00:18Both González and the incumbent president Nicolás Maduro claimed they won the election
00:23and González was placed under an arrest warrant for a range of alleged crimes and faced the
00:29prospect of decades in prison if he had remained in Venezuela.
00:34Nick Rushworth has this report.
00:40The Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González arrived in Spain seeking
00:45asylum amid a political and diplomatic crisis over Venezuela's disputed July election.
00:52Supporters gathered at the military base in Madrid where his plane landed and expressed
00:56relief that he was safe.
00:58Whoever is in danger under Nicolás Maduro's regime should be safer here and can maintain
01:05their strategy from here.
01:11They forced him to flee.
01:12This only confirms that Venezuela is a dictatorship that's impossible to live in.
01:18If you don't agree with the regime, you have to leave or you might get killed.
01:25González arrived after Caracas granted safe passage.
01:28His surprise departure came just days after Maduro's government ordered his arrest.
01:38The governments of Spain and Venezuela agreed on providing safe conduct to citizen Edmundo
01:43González so he could abandon national territory and he could receive the asylum granted by
01:51Spain.
01:53The Spanish foreign minister says there were no talks on González's exile.
02:01There has not been any kind of political negotiation between the government of Spain and the government
02:06of Venezuela.
02:07The political asylum has been at the personal request of Edmundo González.
02:15Venezuela's opposition says July's election resulted in a resounding win for González
02:19and published vote tallies online to show that.
02:26Nicolás Maduro, now into his third term as president, has dismissed that and says there
02:30was a right-wing plot to sabotage his government.
02:33The US, EU and various foreign governments say they won't accept his win until he releases
02:38proof that he got most votes.
02:43And I'm pleased now to be joined live on the programme by Christopher Sabatini.
02:47He's a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
02:52Good afternoon to you.
02:53Thanks for joining us.
02:55What options does González have now that he's safely out of Venezuela?
03:00Well, he has the option of being free, of not having to worry about being jailed for
03:06competing in what was supposed to be an international guaranteed and democratic election, which
03:11clearly the government, by all accounts, including an evaluation of the 25,000 vote
03:17polls, tabulations, or actas, as they're called in Venezuela, proved that he had won.
03:22So now he doesn't have to serve jail time.
03:24So that's a good thing, of course.
03:27But you know, right now it does diminish his leadership in Venezuela.
03:30And you can hear, you can tell from the report that you had before when Alex Saab was kind
03:35of poking him a little bit for leaving the country, although they had forced him to leave.
03:39So his departure is very much in the interest of the Maduro regime.
03:43Having said that, González can now, as a former diplomat, can now travel to other countries
03:48to try to rally support as effectively the president-elect of Venezuela in European capitals,
03:55in Brazil, in Colombia, in the United States.
03:58So it will help to build more of an international momentum.
04:01And by the same token, the person who he was standing in for, Maria Curitiba Machado, remains
04:07in Venezuela and she'll remain a very powerful figure within domestic politics.
04:11And that is her there to the left of Emundo González in the photo.
04:15Right.
04:16Well, let's talk a little bit then about the remaining members of the Venezuelan opposition
04:22who are still in the country.
04:23You just mentioned one of those big names there.
04:25How weakened is the opposition by the fact that González is out of the country?
04:32It's weakened in many ways.
04:33Having the effective president-elect out of the country does definitely diminish his
04:38stature within domestic politics.
04:42But also it strengthens in some ways as a symbol.
04:44It demonstrates the very sheer cruelty and brutality of this regime that forced him to
04:49flee under broad allegations of terrorism that included basically falsifying government
04:56documents as well as trying to incite rebellion.
05:00It demonstrates this is a regime that will brook no criticism domestically or internationally.
05:05And it demonstrates, again, the complete facade of an election that they held on July 28.
05:11So it's an important symbolic moment.
05:12Over the long term, it may very well hurt the opposition because he's not in the country.
05:17But to be quite frank, you know, this is a 75-year-old man who ran as a stand-in for
05:23his country.
05:24You know, it's completely understandable that he had to leave given the charges and the
05:28witch hunt against him.
05:30And in terms of diplomatic support now, González, obviously in Spain, I imagine meeting with
05:36members of the Spanish government.
05:38What kinds of support is he getting from allies in Spain, also in places like the United States?
05:44And is it enough?
05:46He's getting support, broadly speaking, in European capitals and really across the Western
05:51hemisphere.
05:52Josep Borrell, basically the foreign secretary of the EU, yesterday denounced the exile,
06:00the asylum, and effectively declared Edmundo González as the legitimate winner of the
06:05elections.
06:06Tony Blinken in the United States, the secretary of state, did the same.
06:10So I think this will solidify in many ways their personal relationship with him and demonstrates
06:16that he has their support.
06:17The question really is for the international community is what comes next.
06:20They've been questioning these results, they've been demanding the actas, as you can see right
06:23there in the photo, the polling, poll-by-poll results that the government refuses to release.
06:30And the government has not released them.
06:31And so what is the international community going to do next?
06:34Hopefully, this will solidify some sort of coordinated action that involves both negotiations
06:39but also the threat of individual sanctions against many in the regime who are guilty
06:43of what clearly is a fraud.
06:45Do you think Nicolas Maduro is likely now to serve this full six-year term in office?
06:51You know, honestly, I find that hard to believe.
06:54This has been said before, but given the level of repression, given the level of international
06:58condemnation, given the fact that the economy has shrunk by two-thirds in the last eight
07:05or so years, and more than almost eight million people have fled, it's difficult to imagine
07:12how this can persist.
07:13But of course, Nicolas Maduro has defied expectations before.
07:17I think, you know, again, the cruelty of this government is certainly a shock to the world
07:22over and so its willingness to cling on to power is really, you know, is unprecedented.
07:27So he could very well survive, but six years is a long time, international isolation is
07:31a long time, and people are quite frankly fed up, as we've seen from the demonstrations,
07:35since the July 28th elections.
07:38Christopher Sabatini, great to get your view on all of this.
07:40Thank you very much indeed.