Missing Venezuelan official resurfaces after a 10-week absence. Maduro blames ‘fake news’
The president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, briefly reappeared on camera Tuesday after a 71-day absence that sparked social media speculation about his fate.
But the circumstances surrounding his absence remain a mystery, even as the Caracas regime accused the news media of exaggerating the coverage of his disappearance as part of a “psychological warfare” operation.
Amoroso, an ally of President Nicolas Maduro placed at the helm of the electoral council to ensure the ruler’s reelection, has not publicly explained what he was doing during his 10-week long disappearance while the regime fended off international challenges to the council’s declaration that Maduro won the July 28th election.
The head of Venezuela’s top electoral authority was the one who declared Maduro the winner of the controversial presidential election, even though the organization he presides has yet to release the official vote count proving the ruler’s victory at the polls.
During an event held by Maduro on Tuesday, the Venezuelan ruler presented Amoroso as if he were a trophy before criticizing the media’s coverage of his prolonged absence.
“Today they were involved in their daily psychological warfare,” Maduro said at the event. “Keep it up, you are doing well with the lies and with spreading fake news.”
Various media outlets, including the Miami Herald and the Colombian magazine Semana, reported the official’s prolonged public disappearance and the uproar it had created on social media.
Amoroso, who during the event was on a platform surrounded by military personnel and high-ranking regime officials, was seen smiling nervously as he briefly got up from his seat and later, in another video at the end of the event, shook hands with a stern-faced Maduro.
Amoroso had not been seen in public since Aug. 5, when he appeared before the Venezuelan Supreme Court to provide undisclosed documents that supposedly showed that the Venezuelan strongman won the election with 52% of the votes.
The opposition says the investigation conducted by the Supreme Court, an entity tightly controlled by the regime, was a farce designed to hide the fact that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez was the real winner of the election with more than 68% of the vote, and that the numbers announced on election night were a fabrication that Amoroso was forced to produce.
The official’s prolonged absence had triggered rumors on social media that he was on the way to being extradited to the United States or that he was being held against his will by regime forces.
The latest rumors suggested that Amoroso was under custody at the Caracas military complex known as Fuerte Tiuna and that he was held there after being caught making plans to leave the country.
That Amoroso is in custody or under close surveillance by the regime cannot be ruled out, said Antonio De La Cruz, president of the Washington-based think-tank Inter American Trends.
“This is an individual that the regime cannot allow to leave” the country, De La Cruz said. “What keeps Maduro in power is Amoroso’s declaration that he won. But if Amoroso defects and retracts his statement, Maduro’s legitimacy comes crumbling down.”