Venezuelan opposition rejects Maduro murder accusations Latin American Herald Tribune October 4, 2014
CARACAS – Venezuela’s MUD coalition of opposition political parties rejected Saturday a statement by President Nicolas Maduro accusing them of responsibility in the murder of a ruling-party lawmaker.
“We deeply regret that the head of state, in such sorrowful circumstances as the violent death of any Venezuelan, does not use the moment to call for harmony, for peace... but instead launches the most serious of accusations,” MUD spokesman Henry Ramos Allup said at a press conference.
The secretary general of the Democratic Action party and MUD spokesman called it “unbelievable” that Maduro would use the funeral of lawmaker Robert Serra “to incite his base to violence.”
The 27-year-old lawmaker was murdered together with his companion and assistant Maria Herrera last Wednesday night at his Caracas home, a crime that authorities say was a carefully planned political attack.
Maduro has attributed the crime to members of the national opposition and to Colombia’s ex-President Alvaro Uribe.
“If they (the Maduro government) had material proof that some member of the opposition perpetrated that crime... they would by now have said who he was,” Ramos Allup said about the accusations.
Maduro spoke at the funerals of Serra and Herrera about identifying and hunting down the perpetrators of the double murder, as well as about the arrest sometime in the week of four groups that intend to “attack” and “spread violence” in the country.
After saying that the “right” can never be part of a true democracy, he referred to MUD’s secretary general, Jesus Torrealba, as “garbage” for the “disgusting statement” he made when expressing his condolences for the deceased lawmaker, while also regretting that the crime forced him to suspend an opposition event.
The MUD decided to suspend an anti-government protest march this Saturday to show respect for the mourning due Serra and his companion.
Ramos Allup said Maduro felt “offended and attacked” by the condolences that Torrealba offered “in a very direct, sincere and human manner,” interpreting in that way, he said, the feelings “not only of the MUD, but of all Venezuelans who reject violence.”
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