The Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, appealed this Sunday to society and European values to “free Venezuela” from the “criminal dictatorship” of President Nicolás Maduro and then begin the “moral reconstruction” of the country.
Machado called for Europe’s help to achieve a “moral reconstruction” of Venezuela, a “luminous” future, and gave as an example the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War during a speech recorded in Venezuela for the Forum on the Future of the EU that concludes this Sunday in Madrid, as reported Europa Press.
“Europe, I know that it will help more and more to liberate Venezuela. And Venezuela can also help renew that spirit of Europe,” he noted.
“You, young Europeans, know what it means to lift a nation from the ruins of war and transform that pain into peace. Your continent did it and that is why Europe has an essential role, not only as an ally in this existential struggle, but also as a moral reference,” he assured.
For the opposition leader, “Europe has to remind the world that democracy is not a luxury or a past concept, it is a daily achievement.” “I promise you something. Venezuela will be free. And when it is, it will be a country where young people will want to livenever escape. Venezuela will be free and I will be honored to welcome you here with open arms,” she stressed.
Message from Edmundo González Urrutia
Machado also criticized the Venezuelan government because it uses poverty as a “tool of social control.” “For many years, our people have faced a criminal dictatorship, a regime that has destroyed everything: institutions, corrupted justice, has collapsed our infrastructure and economy, forcing millions to flee,” he said. “But despite all this, Venezuela is standing. And that example of those who do not give up and a force that grows every day is youth,” he stressed.
Along the same lines, the former opposition candidate in the last Venezuelan elections, held in July 2024, also spoke at the forum and by videoconference. Edmundo González Urrutiawho denounced that “in Venezuela there is no democracy,” “it was destroyed.”
“There is no rule of law. There is no freedom of expression. There are millions of compatriots who live in exile and thousands who are imprisoned for thinking differently,” he warned.
“Democracy is not an application that you install once and it works. It is a living system (…) that must be updated every day and its most recent version depends on us, on how we confront lies, how we defend the truth and how much we care about others,” he said.
González, who lives in exile in Madrid, highlighted that “every time a dictatorship falls, the cause of freedom throughout the world is strengthened. Every time a society surrenders to the world, that cause recedes.”
The Venezuelan opposition leader stated that “Hacking indifference is the real challenge of this generation, because nothing strengthens authoritarians more than silence, apathy or false neutrality.” “Democracy weakens when we stop believing in it,” he concluded.
