Ex-Venezuelan diplomat who never considered presidency to campaign

CARACAS, Venezuela — A few weeks ago, Edmundo González Urrutia was just a grandfather visiting his daughter and grandchildren, who live abroad, enjoying two months of family time in retirement. But the leisurely pace — and the anonymity — will have to wait as he now campaigns to become Venezuela’s next president.

President is not a title González ever sought. “Never,” he emphatically told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday at his apartment in his country’s capital, Caracas.

In the whirlwind world of Venezuelan politics, the former ambassador is now crucial to efforts to oust President Nicolás Maduro as the main opposition faction’s presidential candidate.

“I have never held an elected position. I have never participated in partisan politics of positions of elected office,” he said. “I accepted it with enormous responsibility and as a contribution on my part to the democratization of the country, to the process of trying to seek the understanding, reconciliation, of Venezuelans.”

González became the opposition Unitary Platform’s candidate last month after former lawmaker María Corina Machado, who easily won the group’s presidential primary last year, and her handpicked alternative were banned from registering. The coalition’s leaders selected him 15 days after he returned from vacation, and he accepted under a few conditions, including that his wife be convinced of the decision.

The July 28 election will have 10 candidates, but apart from the Unitary Platform, none are expected to pose a threat to Maduro’s power.