Speaking on the summons she received yesterday to give a statement regarding the accusations against her, Maria Corina Machado said this today:
I’ve always shown my face, and I will not give up this struggle until we win. Therefore, I will go to the Attorney General’s office on June 16.
Maria Corina called the allegations levelled against her by the government as another attempt to “annihilate me physically and morally”, and claimed that she was receiving threatening phone calls and text messages against her life and the lives of her children. Maria Corina maintains that the e-mails produced by the government – so far the only evidence against her – are false.
Meanwhile, Carlos Eduardo Barrizbeitia, a National Assembly deputy from the state of Carabobo, spoke on what he thought one of the accused conspirators – Henrique Salas Romer – should do, and said:
By attending as a witness [as ordered], Salas Romer would be endorsing the lies and tricks of the regime (…) I don’t believe that Salas Romer would be so gullible as to [assist] with a lie the regime came up with.
For its part, the government elaborated on the latest alleged coup attempt. Jorge Rodriguez, the mayor of the Libertador municipality in Caracas, said:
In the next few days, more evidence will appear documenting the participation of State Department officials in all of this.
On Tuesday, Maduro said that he would be making a formal request of the White House to explain its involvement in the supposed coup.
It is important to note that so far, the government has not produced any evidence to support its claims that Maria Corina Machado and other government critics were involved in any kind of coup attempt, beyond a handful of pictures of e-mails the government claims were written by the various accused parties.
In Other News
Henrique Capriles gave a speech today in which he said:
80% of Venezuelans say that things are going badly. There’s an enormous dissatisfaction in the country. While the central has lost connection with the reality the country finds itself in, in Miranda [Caprile’s state] we work every day without discriminating against colour. The chavista people know that we respect them, they also know that I do not believe in the confrontation of people against people. What we have here is a war between a government and the people. The model the government has planted has failed, and the people are the ones who suffer through scarcity and the high cost of living.
There was a protest in the Parque del Este neighbourhood of Caracas today. It appears as if demonstrators managed to block a road through the area:
And a caravan made its way through Maracaibo earlier today, apparently denouncing yesterday’s decision against Leopoldo Lopez:
The price of toilet paper increased today, after the government set a new price for the item. Depending on the quality of the paper, prices will increase anywhere between 30% and 237%. While the price of a standard package of four rolls cost 15.9 bolivares until today, the new price will start off at 20.69 bolivares, anywhere up to 53.60 bolivares depending on the quality and quantity of the paper in the package.
The full list of price changes affecting toilet paper can be found here.
In Venezuela, most consumer products – including basic necessities – have their prices mandated by the government, according to a set of laws the government claims ensure fair prices.
The president of the COPEI opposition party, Roberto Enriquez, announced today that he would be filing a motion before the supreme court to have Attorney General Luisa Ortega impeached. Addressing the futility of the motion, Enriquez said:
Asking the supreme court to impeach the attorney general might seem like an idle gesture doomed to fail, it’s not that at all. Nothing we do could be enough, but that’s no reason to not do it, or to stop fighting.
Speaking at an event in which he called for unity within the National Armed Forces, Maduro said:
The magnicidal guarimberarightdoes not have ethical limits. They seek their objectives through any means. [The protests] are a psychological war to poison our homeland with hatred, to destroy us to be able to conquer us again.
Finally, a group called Free Leopoldo has released an English translation of the defence Leopoldo Lopez wrote during his first two and a half months at the Ramo Verde military prison. Leopoldo’s defence, in English, can be found here.
In Venezuela 