AFP, Caracas

Venezuela’s opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia said yesterday that he will not attend a Supreme Court hearing on the disputed re-election of President Nicolas Maduro.

“If I go” to the Supreme Court, “I will be jeopardizing not only my freedom but more importantly: the will of the Venezuelan people expressed on July 28,” said Gonzalez Urrutia, branded a “criminal” by Maduro and who has not been seen in public for over a week, in a post on social media platform X.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino on Tuesday reaffirmed the military’s “absolute loyalty” to Maduro.

The comments came after opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and leader Maria Corina Machado urged members of the armed forces “to stand at the side of the people,” in a letter published on Monday.

“We ratify our absolute loyalty to citizen Nicolas Maduro Moros,” Padrino, an army general, said during a broadcast on state television, where he was flanked by other top brass of the military and the police.

These “fatuous and irrational calls seek to break our unity and institutionality, but they will never achieve it,” Padrino added.