Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she is in hiding and that she fears for her freedom and for her life, in an op-ed published on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.
Machado, who is the main force behind the presidential candidacy of former ambassador Edmundo González, emphasized that Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro lost Sunday’s election and that she can prove it.
“I write this from hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom and that of my fellow countrymen under the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro,” Machado wrote in an editorial titled: I can prove that Maduro got trounced.
“Mr. Maduro did not win the Venezuelan presidential election on Sunday. He lost by a landslide to Edmundo González, 67% to 30%. I know this to be true because I can prove it. I have receipts obtained directly from more than 80% of the country’s polling stations.”
Often nowadays this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
From an inside perspective, this comment would have been much more interesting to reply to if you had any intellectual integrity and contributed to the substance of the post.