Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Opposition Leader Henrique Capriles Attend Meeting On Crime After Monica Spear Murder

EFE reports that Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan opposition leader and two-time presidential candidate, attended a Wednesday meeting on crime and insecurity convened by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The meeting, which follows the murder of former Miss Universe Mónica Spear and her husband, was the first to feature the two figures since the bitterly contested April elections, which Maduro won by a razor-thin margin. Capriles refused to accept the results, claiming his team had evidence of irregularities which a post-election audit never addressed. Maduro regularly refers to him and the opposition more broadly as “putschists” and “fascists”.

Capriles, who is also the governor of Miranda state, says he still won’t recognize the results. “You all know very well my position, the country knows my position as far as politics goes,” he told reporters. “Now, faced with insecurity, faced with violence I’m conversing with whoever, and I’m ready to work with whoever.” In a Twitter post addressed to Maduro on Tuesday, he made similar overtures. "Nicolás Maduro, I suggest putting the differences aside and joining against insecurity; in one single bloc," Capriles wrote. "We must feel pain in our soul for the loss of every Venezuelan dying because of rampant violence, and we must get together to fight it.”

The two rivals greeted each other briefly at Wednesday afternoon's meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace, which convened governors from every state and mayors from the 79 Venezuelan municipalities where crime is highest. According to El Universal, Maduro acknowledged a nationwide spike in violence in 2013 and called the murder of Spears and her husband “a slap in the face for everyone,” adding that “if anything can be learned from this situation, it’s that we must act with a greater level of coordination and efficiency."

The Venezuelan president also called for the construction of “a humane model which protects society and pacifies it from within, which substitutes the anti-values of easy wealth and disrespect toward life,” and added that Spear’s murder resembled a hit carried out by Colombian drug traffickers -- a problem Maduro says his country has inherited from its neighbor.