Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader María Co­ri­na Macha­do on Thurs­day vowed to keep the pres­sure on Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro to leave of­fice in Jan­u­ary.

She al­so urged the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to rise to the oc­ca­sion by im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­ing her fac­tion’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date as the win­ner of the elec­tion in Ju­ly, and im­ple­ment mea­sures to hold gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ac­count­able for abus­es un­leashed af­ter the vote.

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

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

Her com­ments came three days af­ter the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem, which is loy­al to the rul­ing par­ty, 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 — stacked with rul­ing par­ty sup­port­ers — de­clared Maduro the win­ner, it nev­er re­leased vote tal­lies back­ing their claim. How­ev­er, the op­po­si­tion coali­tion claimed that González de­feat­ed Maduro by a 2-to-1 mar­gin and of­fered as proof vote tal­lies from more than 80% of the elec­tron­ic vot­ing ma­chines used in the elec­tion.

Thou­sands of peo­ple, in­clud­ing mi­nors, took to the streets across Venezuela hours af­ter the elec­toral coun­cil’s an­nounce­ment. The protests were large­ly 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 re­spond­ed to the demon­stra­tions with full force. A Wednes­day re­port from Hu­man Rights Watch im­pli­cat­ed state se­cu­ri­ty forces and gangs aligned with the rul­ing par­ty in some of the 24 deaths that oc­curred dur­ing the protests.

“They have no lim­its in their cru­el­ty,” Macha­do told re­porters Thurs­day.

White House na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty spokesman John Kir­by on Tues­day con­demned the “un­jus­ti­fied ar­rest war­rant” of González, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “an­oth­er ex­am­ple of Mr. Maduro’s ef­forts to main­tain 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 the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment has been grant­ed var­i­ous forms of eco­nom­ic re­lief from eco­nom­ic sanc­tions the U.S. im­posed over the years to try to top­ple Maduro. Ear­li­er this year, it end­ed some of the re­lief when the gov­ern­ment in­creased re­pres­sion ef­forts against mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion, civ­il so­ci­ety and oth­ers it con­sid­ers as ad­ver­saries.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro al­ly, on Thurs­day in­sist­ed his of­fice had sought the war­rant be­cause González, 75, failed to ap­pear three times to an­swer ques­tions in a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion fo­cused on the pub­li­ca­tion on­line of the tal­ly sheets ob­tained by the op­po­si­tion. Saab told re­porters that the pub­li­ca­tion con­sti­tutes an usurpa­tion of pow­ers ex­clu­sive of the Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil and claimed that the op­po­si­tion’s vote records are false.

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

Saab’s claim con­tra­dicts ex­perts from the Unit­ed Na­tions and the Carter Cen­ter, which at the in­vi­ta­tion of Maduro’s gov­ern­ment ob­served the elec­tion and then de­ter­mined the re­sults an­nounced by elec­toral au­thor­i­ties lacked cred­i­bil­i­ty.

In a state­ment crit­i­cal of the elec­tion, the U.N. ex­perts stopped short of val­i­dat­ing the op­po­si­tion’s claim to vic­to­ry, but they said the fac­tion’s vot­ing records pub­lished on­line ap­pear to ex­hib­it all of the orig­i­nal se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP)