July 26, 2024, 10:27 PM
July 26, 2024, 10:27 PM
He veto on a flight in which former Latin American leaders were going to travel from Panama to Venezuela to be electoral observers and a note of protest from Chile motivated by the deportation of other observers increased the tension on Friday two days before the elections, in which Nicolas Maduro seeks a third term.
Maduro, 61 years old and in power since 2013, has as his main rival on Sunday the diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia74, nominated by the opposition alliance Plaforma Unitaria following the political disqualification of its original candidate, María Corina Machado, and other leaders.
Venezuelan authorities prevented the Takeoff from Panama’s Tocumen Airport from a Copa Airlines flight that had the former presidents among its passengers, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino denounced on Friday.
These are former rulers Mireya Moscoso (Panama), Miguel Angel Rodriguez (Costa Rica), Jorge Quiroga (Bolivia) and Vicente Fox (Mexico), members of the right-wing Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA Group) and strong critics of Maduro.
“The plane (was) full, completely full, of Venezuelans who were going to vote”“We saw tears, people crying, telling us: please stay, don’t go!” Moscoso said at a press conference.
Fox, meanwhile, considered it a “bad sign.”
On Wednesday, powerful Chavista leader Diosdado Cabello announced that they would be barred from entering.
“If you are not invited to a party, what do they say to you? (…) they say: ‘please be kind, and leave’ (…). “They are showmen,” Cabello said. on state television. “They’re not going to come here to bother us,” he added.
The Chilean government, for its part, sent a note of protest to Venezuela on Friday night for denying entry into the country to conservative senators José Manuel Rojo Edwards and Felipe Kast, who traveled to act as observers and who were returned to their country.
“This shows that all the words of some who say that this is a democracy are simply a big lie,” said Kast.
Ten members of the Spanish People’s Party (PP) congress and MEPs, as well as a member of parliament from Colombia and another from Ecuador, also denounced their deportation upon their arrival at Maiquetía airport, which serves Caracas.
These incidents add to the alarms raised in the region by a Maduro’s warning of “a bloodbath” if the opposition wins, words about which the presidents of Brazil and Chile, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gabriel Boric, expressed concern.
Also on Friday, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa made an “urgent call for all forms of harassment and persecution against the political opposition and the electoral process itself to cease.”
He said he was concerned to see how recalcitrant figures of an old politics now want to perpetuate themselves in power, they want to keep this prosperous nation kidnapped.
“All ready”
The United States, the European Union and most governments of Latin America rejected Maduro’s reelection in 2018 in elections boycotted by the opposition, which called them fraudulent.
“We have everything ready,” said the president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, on Friday at an event in Caracas with international observers who were invited.
The installation process of the More than 30,000 voting tables The election was launched in the morning, marked by complaints from opposition activists about delays. However, the Minister of Defense, General Vladimir Padrino López, defended the deployment of the Plan República, the security operation to guard the elections.
“Warning! They are already trying to disturb the electoral climate with biased accusations on social networks,” questioned X Padrino, who this week denied that the Armed Forces will be “arbitrators.”
González Urrutia asked that institution to “respect and ensure respect” the results at the polls.
Mass arrests
Machado reported that she spoke with the presidents of Argentina, Javier Milei; Paraguay, Santiago Peña; and Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou. She thanked them in X for “their solidarity and support” in the “fight for democracy.”
“We will always be with the Venezuelan people,” Milei responded.
The human rights NGO Foro Penal also denounced this Friday that 135 people linked to the campaign of opposition leader González Urrutia have been arrested, of which 47 remain in custody.
There are 10 candidates in this electoral process in which 21 million of the 30 million Venezuelans are called to participate. The polls favor González Urrutia, but the Chavistas dismiss them and accuse their adversaries of planning to ignore the results and generate violence.
