Buenos Aires.-Former President Alberto Fernández will travel to Venezuela in the next few hours to observe next Sunday’s elections.
In this context, he announced that before the elections he will meet with opposition leaders “to listen to their concerns” and left a warning message to Nicolás Maduro, who is putting his power at stake and threatened a bloodbath if he loses: “If he is defeated, what he has to do is accept it.”
“I am going to be able to speak with the opposition and hear their concerns first and see if I can help correct them. What I want is for there to be a transparent election and what Venezuela needs is to recover its democratic coexistence and those who are wandering around the world because they left the country for whatever reason can return,” said Fernandez in an interview with Radio Con Vos.
He added: “If (Maduro) is defeated, what he has to do is accept it; as (the president of Brazil) Lula (da Silva) said, the one who wins, wins, and the one who loses, loses. Period. It’s over. That’s how democracy works. I’m not going to legalize anyone, but I’m going to do what they asked me to do, be an observer of the elections so that everything works well.”
Yesterday, the Brazilian president, a regional ally of Maduro, distanced himself from the Chavista dictator less than a week before the elections in which the polls give a clear advantage to the Venezuelan opposition, and said that he was “scared” by the threat of a “bloodbath” in case of defeat.
In an interview with foreign correspondents, he said that in a democracy, “the loser gets a bath of votes, not a bath of blood,” and that “Maduro has to learn that when you win, you stay, and when you lose, you leave and prepare for other elections.”
Regarding the elections, the opposition denounced that the National Electoral Council implemented measures to prevent Venezuelans abroad from registering and casting their vote, aware that the majority of displaced people support the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
David Smolansky, former OAS Commissioner for Venezuelan migrants and member of González’s campaign team, told Infobae that “an atrocity has been committed against Venezuelans abroad, who cannot vote in these elections. Our civil and political rights have been violated, denying the participation of those 8 million migrants and refugees.”
In another part of the report, Alberto Fernández reviewed his four years as President and defended his economic achievements by pointing out that “the mistakes were more political than management-related.” He also pointed out that he did not speak again with Daniel Scioli, whom he described as “his friend,” but maintained that “he has to take responsibility for what he did,” in relation to his participation in the current libertarian government, first as ambassador to Brazil and, currently, as Secretary of Sports.
On the other hand, he acknowledged that he had spoken with different leaders, with the exception of former Vice President Cristina Kirchner, to “see how to get out of the mess” that Javier Milei’s government represents. “We need to create an alternative, we don’t have one today, and we have to put a new generation of leaders on the scene,” he indicated.
“I am not retiring anyone; if we want to recover this, what is needed is to give Peronism more democratic forms, to let people express themselves, to choose their leaders, and to let new leaders emerge. And to understand that we are in a dilemma, there is a very authoritarian right,” he analyzed.Infobae.
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2024-07-26 22:32:02
