CARACAS – Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado announced on Thursday that she will pressure President Nicolás Maduro to leave office in January.

She also called on the international community to rise to the occasion and immediately recognise her faction’s candidate as the winner of the July elections and to take action to hold government officials accountable for abuses revealed after the vote.

Machado, speaking to reporters online from an undisclosed location in Venezuela, reiterated her commitment to negotiating incentives and guarantees that could lead to a peaceful transfer of power.

“We, the Venezuelan people, have done everything,” she said. “We have challenged the rules of tyranny… and we have won, and we have proven it. So if the world or any government thinks of looking the other way, imagine where the sovereign will and popular sovereignty will end up in the Western world. It would mean that elections are worthless.”

Her comments came three days after the country’s ruling-party-loyal justice system issued an arrest warrant for former diplomat Edmundo González, who represented the main opposition coalition in the July 28 election.

While the National Electoral Council — heavily weighted toward the ruling party — declared Maduro the winner, it never released the voting results to back up that claim. However, the opposition coalition claimed González defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin and presented voting results from more than 80% of the electronic voting machines used in the election as evidence.

Thousands of people, including minors, took to the streets across Venezuela hours after the election council was announced. The protests were mostly peaceful, but demonstrators also toppled statues of Maduro’s predecessor, the late leader Hugo Chávez, threw rocks at law enforcement officers and buildings, and burned police motorcycles and government propaganda.

Maduro’s government has responded to the demonstrations with full force. A report Wednesday by Human Rights Watch blamed state security forces and gangs allied with the ruling party for some of the 24 deaths that have occurred during the protests.

“Their cruelty knows no bounds,” Machado told reporters on Thursday.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday condemned the “unjustified arrest warrant” for González, calling it “yet another example of Mr. Maduro’s efforts to cling to power by force.” Kirby said the U.S. is considering a range of options to show Maduro and his allies that “their actions in Venezuela will have consequences.”

Under Biden, the Venezuelan government has received various forms of economic relief from the economic sanctions the U.S. imposed over the years in an attempt to oust Maduro. Earlier this year, the government ended some of that relief as it ramped up its repressive efforts against members of the opposition, civil society and others it sees as opponents.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, insisted Thursday that his office sought the order because González, 75, failed to appear three times to answer questions in a criminal investigation focused on the online publication of opposition results sheets. Saab told reporters that the publication constituted a usurpation of powers exclusive to the National Electoral Council and claimed that the opposition’s voting records were fraudulent.

“You shared this website on your (social) networks,” Saab said, referring to González. “Explain why you shared it if it is false.”

Saab’s claim contradicts claims by experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which observed the election at the invitation of Maduro’s government and later found the results announced by electoral authorities to be unreliable. In a statement critical of the election, the UN experts did not confirm the opposition’s claim of victory but said that the factions’ voting records published online appeared to contain all of the original safeguards.

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