Opposition leader Edmundo González has called for unity among Venezuelans to assume office as president of Venezuela on January 10, the date on which the country’s Constitution stipulates that the president-elect must assume his duties.
A few hours before the start of the new year, González has asked all Venezuelans to stay together “with the commitment to enforce that mandate in 2025” and for January 10 to be “the day of the embrace, in the streets of our country, among all Venezuelans without distinctions or vendettas.”
“That day is the opportunity to leave behind the words that promote hatred and division. It is the opportunity to advance together, firmly and definitively, on the path of national reunion and unity,” the opposition leader, who is exiled in Spain, expressed in a message on the social network X.
The message is accompanied by a video in which statements by González and the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado alternate, and in which both have claimed the “longing for freedom, democracy and prosperity” that the people of Venezuela expressed in the presidential elections of July 28.
Machado has reminded Venezuelans who have a relative in exile or who are political prisoners “for working to make a better country.” In addition, he has claimed that “together, united as brothers,” Venezuelans have found “the way to overcome” all the obstacles they have encountered in 2024 “to continue moving forward.”
In this sense, he has maintained that this year there has been “very hard work” building a political alternative to the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and he has called for the role and responsibility of “everyone”. “Those who are inside and outside Venezuela, civilians, military, officials, children, young people, adults, everyone” will have their role in 2025, according to Machado.
González has ended the video by sending “a fraternal hug” to every Venezuelan “in this 2025 that is about to begin”. “Let’s prepare ourselves, we’ll see each other in the streets in January because you know, this is until the end. May God bless the men and women of good will on earth,” he concluded.
