An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.Paul@guardian.co.tt

Venezue­lans liv­ing in T&T have joined the calls for Nico­las Maduro to ac­cept de­feat and step down as Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent so they can re­turn home.

At a can­dle­light vig­il out­side the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, they al­so ap­pealed for in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion to re­store or­der fol­low­ing the coun­try’s con­tentious Ju­ly 28 elec­tions.

Among those speak­ing out was Os­mar Mau­r­era, a refugee who has been liv­ing here for the past six years, who called for the “re­al truth” about the elec­tion.

Fight­ing back tears, Mau­r­era said a call had been made fol­low­ing Sun­day’s elec­tion “for all the peo­ple who had been work­ing in the elec­tion polling of­fices ... now they are be­ing per­se­cut­ed. They have many or­ders to ar­rest many peo­ple.”

He said the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to get in­volved to en­sure that the voic­es of the eight mil­lion Venezue­lan refugees liv­ing around the world are heard.

“The on­ly thing we want is our free­dom. A free Venezuela,” he said.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 Venezue­lan refugees liv­ing in T&T vot­ed in last week­end’s elec­tion.

Mau­r­era said Maduro’s regime had been in place for the past 25 years and his re­fusal to leave of­fice meant that “we have to keep fight­ing.”

“It is a hard process be­cause we are not fight­ing a reg­u­lar gov­ern­ment be­cause they have all the pow­er to ma­nip­u­late all the in­sti­tu­tions in Venezuela. They have all the army and all the pow­er so that is not a reg­u­lar gov­ern­ment, it is a whole sys­tem,” he said

A woman tak­ing part in the vig­il said: “We just want to be hap­py.”

She ex­pressed con­fi­dence that op­po­si­tion can­di­date Ed­mun­do González, who is chal­leng­ing the elec­tion re­sults, would en­sure a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life and stan­dard of liv­ing for all Venezue­lans so that those who had fled the coun­try would be en­cour­aged to re­turn.

An­oth­er woman cried as she spoke about the hard­ships her fam­i­ly was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in Venezuela.

“It is hard to see peo­ple eat­ing out of the garbage like dogs. Those with health prob­lems are not sur­viv­ing,” she said.

“We are sick of this dic­ta­tor­ship.”

Maduro yes­ter­day asked Venezuela’s Supreme Court to con­duct an au­dit of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion af­ter op­po­si­tion lead­ers dis­put­ed his claim of vic­to­ry.
Maduro told re­porters the rul­ing par­ty was al­so ready to show all the vote tal­ly sheets from Sun­day’s elec­tion.
This was Maduro’s first con­ces­sion to de­mands for more trans­paren­cy about the elec­tion. How­ev­er, the Supreme Court is close­ly aligned with his gov­ern­ment and the move has drawn crit­cism from for­eign ob­servers who said the court is too close to the gov­ern­ment to pro­duce an in­de­pen­dent re­view. Un­der the watch­ful eyes of the po­lice, the peo­ple tak­ing part in the vig­il placed the light­ed can­dles along the pave­ment in front of the Venezue­lan Em­bassy.