“We want to vote” and “Madrid, listen, join the fight,” Venezuelans chanted in Spain. “Free elections for Venezuela,” is what a poster described the rally that brought together half a thousand people in the center of Madrid.
Venezuelans denounced the obstacles that voters from abroad are encountering to participate in the presidential elections on July 28. “What we are experiencing is an electoral blockade,” said the campaign manager of the María Corina Machado Command in Spain, David Iturriago, EFE reports.
Likewise, the co-founder of mivotocuenta.info, Natacha Lander, detailed the difficulties that Venezuelans living outside the country are having to register in the electoral registry, especially those who are in Spain.
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“Legally, it is only necessary to be over 18 and have legal residence in Spain,” he clarified, “however, the Venezuelan Government is asking for permanent residence in Spain, a requirement that leaves out all those who have arrived in the last five years and have residence.” for asylum or for roots,” said Lander.
The Spanish consulates opened the registration process much later than stipulated and the one in Vigo has not yet opened it.
“This problem is global, since there are more than 80 places around the world where Venezuelans from abroad can register and so far only 22 have opened,” he stressed.
According to Iturriago, these obstacles are further proof that Nicolás Maduro’s regime is not respecting the right of Venezuelans to vote freely.
But for Venezuelans abroad it is not an obstacle. Many of them carried signs with phrases such as ‘Voting is my right’, ‘Free elections for Venezuela’, ‘I want change for Venezuela’ and ‘Maduro is not going to choose who is the Venezuelan candidate’.
Colombians and Venezuelans respond to María Corina Machado’s call for protest
About twenty Colombians and Venezuelans went to the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá in the call that María Corina Machado made this week to protest against the “electoral blockade” that, she denounced, the Maduro regime imposes, facing the presidential elections on the 28th. of July.
Behind a large banner that read “Raise your voice Venezuela. Against the dictatorship from Bogotá” and shouting “freedom, freedom”, less than fifty people, led by politicians from the right-wing Colombian Democratic Center and former members of the Colombian security forces, gathered in the country.
«We have come as part of the Colombian Congress to support this protest. We know that if democracy is not recovered in Venezuela we will never have total peace in Colombia and the genocidal Nicolás Maduro, that dictator, that repressor, will have to answer before the International Criminal Court and before all the citizens of the world,” the representative assured EFE. to the Chamber of the Uribista Democratic Center José Jaime Uscategui.
According to the congressman, “the people are tired because they have marched for more than 20 years and unfortunately the regime’s repression has been brutal but we must support María Corina Machado and ask the citizens not to give up because otherwise these people will continue abusing Venezuela and the entire region,” he alleged.
For his part, Jorge Eliecer González Zapata, a Venezuelan who lives in Colombia after losing four properties, according to what he says, in Venezuela, attended the rally to demand the departure of Nicolás Maduro and assured that he will vote for Machado, despite who has not been able to register, in Bogotá.
The flags of Venezuela and Machado’s face have also been present in the concentration of those who call themselves “defenders of democracy” and who have also called on the presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico to “not be complicit” .
He asked migrants to go to the consulates to register in the electoral registry to be able to participate in the July elections, a process that has had delays in several countries, so he called on them to report any impediment.
In Mexico they demand free elections
Dozens of Venezuelans in Mexico City demanded free elections towards the presidential elections on July 28 in the nation.
The protesters went out to the Mexican capital with Venezuelan flags and banners after the opposition María Corina Machado’s call to Venezuelans in 50 cities abroad.
In addition, Venezuelans in Mexico criticized the electoral blockade to prevent Machado from competing in the next elections in Venezuela on July 28 and the obstacles in the registration of the historian Corina Yoris to the process.
In this sense, attendees called for an end to human rights violations in the country, the release of political prisoners and denounced the difficulties they have faced in registering in the electoral registry.
Among the attendees who shouted “freedom, freedom” demonstrated in Lincoln Park, in the Polanco neighborhood (neighborhood) of the capital Mexico City, everyone from minors to older adults could be seen participating.
Attendees carried Venezuelan flags and banners that read “We raise our voices for Venezuela”, “Demanding democracy for Venezuela is not a crime” or demands to release political prisoners with their photographs.
«The world sees everything that unites us, Venezuelans are today united in a common dream: to liberate our country and reunite our families. “The world admires the capacity for organization, resilience, and courage that we have shown,” said the former deputy in videos shared on X by her party, Vente Venezuela (VV).
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2024-09-30 06:29:22
