Corbyn urged to decry Maduro ‘atrocities’
JEREMY CORBYN has been urged by his own shadow cabinet to condemn Venezuela’s “out of control” president.
The Labour leader, who is currently on holiday, has remained quiet as violence in the South American state has seen the families of British embassy staff withdrawn and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, accusing Nicolas Maduro of behaving like the “dictator of an evil regime”.
Mr Corbyn instead chose to write on Twitter about the conditions on British trains and the news that Arsenal Football Club has launched a new subscription hunting channel. A shadow cabinet source said: “Jeremy Corbyn really has to think about how this looks to the British public. Venezuela is in a state of chaos and President Maduro is out of control. I sincerely hope that Jeremy condemns these atrocities at the earliest opportunity.”
Mr Corbyn praised Mr Maduro’s regime in June 2015, saying its success in policy areas such as health and education were a “cause for celebration”.
A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “The Labour Party’s statement on Monday made clear our position on the importance of the respect for the rule of law and human rights. We’re watching the situation and developments in Venezuela closely.”
The company that operates Venezuela’s electronic voting system has claimed authorities inflated the results of Sunday’s election by at least a million votes, as Mr Maduro prepared to swear in his new assembly in the face of growing protest.
The Leftist leader claimed more than eight million turned out to vote for his constituent assembly, which is tasked with rewriting the constitution – a move widely decried as a power grab.
But speaking at a London press conference, Antonio Mujica, the chief executive of Smartmatic, said the figure did not tally with the system’s records, insisting that “without doubt… there was manipulation of the turnout data”.
The opposition alleges the true vote count was closer to 2.5 million, which would represent a turnout of around 12 per cent, rather than the 41.5 per cent claimed by the government.