Panama City, Jul 26 (EFE).- Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said Friday that a flight carrying several former presidents who were going to Venezuela to participate as electoral observers in next Sunday’s elections was prevented from taking off from the Central American country.
“A Copa (Airlines) plane carrying (former) president (Mireya) Moscoso and other former presidents bound for Venezuela has not been allowed to take off from Tocumen while they remain on board, due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace. Likewise, another Copa flight to Panama from Caracas has not been allowed to take off,” the Panamanian president reported on his official X account.
These former presidents are part of the Freedom and Democracy Group, which is made up, in addition to Moscoso, of the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, and the former presidents of the Spanish Government José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, as well as the former presidents Mario Abdo Benítez, from Paraguay; Jeanine Áñez and Jorge Quiroga, from Bolivia; Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox, from Mexico, and Iván Duque and Andrés Pastrana, from Colombia.
Former presidents Osvaldo Hurtado, Jamil Mahuad and Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador; Rafael Calderón and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica; and Mauricio Macri of Argentina; as well as Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and former governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño, are also part of this initiative.
Faced with this situation, former President Fox said in a video recorded from inside a plane and shared on his social networks that, in his case, they are “stopped here in Caracas, but there are already four (airline) Copa planes that are also stopped, and they say they will not release them and will not let them fly if the five former presidents do not get off.”
Venezuela’s decision to prevent some of them from leaving Panama comes after the Freedom and Democracy Group said in a statement on Wednesday that any attempt at fraud in Venezuela’s presidential elections must be sanctioned by the international community.
“Any attempt at fraud must be punished with the maximum sanctions, and effective international prosecution must be carried out against Nicolás Maduro and his closest circle,” said Libertad y Democracia.
Ten candidates will participate in Sunday’s elections, including President Nicolás Maduro and former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia, the standard-bearer of the opposition coalition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) and who leads the voting intention, according to traditional pollsters.
“Despite the obstacles imposed by the dictatorship, an electoral process will be held on July 28 in which figures such as María Corina Machado and Corina Yoris have been disqualified. Today, Edmundo González has unified the resistance, thanks to the leadership of María Corina Machado, showing broad popular support in the face of scant support for the dictator,” the former presidents said in the statement.
They also expressed confidence that Venezuela will embark on a new “path to democracy” that will lead to a “political, economic and social rebirth after years of the region’s greatest migration crisis.”
“Given the reality that Venezuela faces today, there are only two possible scenarios on July 28: the resounding triumph of democratic effervescence or the abusive theft of the elections by the dictatorial regime of Nicolás Maduro,” warned the Liberty and Democracy Group.
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2024-07-28 11:16:17
