Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claimed on Monday that opposition leader María Corina Machado has fled the country, making light of her alleged departure after presidential elections she denounced as fraudulent.
Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela since August, following a July election that Maduro claims to have won.
The opposition insists that its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won the vote by a landslide – Machado was herself ruled ineligible to run by institutions loyal to the Maduro regime.
González Urrutia is now in exile in Spain, but Machado had vowed to remain in Venezuela to continue the opposition's struggle.
"To her, who fled the country, don't tell anyone, she left the country, my sources tell me that she fled," Maduro said with a laugh on his television programme, without naming Machado directly.
"They are cowards, they are good at launching messages of hate, of intolerance," he said of the opposition, adding that their leader "got the Gucci suitcases" and left.
The opposition did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.
Machado rejected the idea of following González Urrutia into exile in an interview with AFP last month.
"I am where I feel most useful for the struggle in Venezuela," she said.
Nearly 200 opposition figures, including several members of Machado's entourage, have been arrested this year.
Unrest following July's election claimed 27 lives and saw more than 2,400 people arrested on charges of "terrorism" for taking part in protests.
Venezuela's electoral authority, seen as loyal to the regime, declared a victory for Maduro within hours of polls closing.
The United States, Europe and most Latin American states have refused to recognize Maduro's re-election in the absence of a detailed vote breakdown, which has not been forthcoming.
The opposition published its own tally of polling station-level results, which it said showed González Urrutia had won two-thirds of votes cast.
– TIMES/AFP
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