Julio María Sanguinetti: “Maduro is supported by the bayonet, not by the people”

Former Uruguayan President Julio Maria Sanguinetti (EFE/Sofia Torres)

A few hours after the regime of Nicolás Maduro announced that it had won the elections of July 28, former Uruguayan president Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000) declared: “There was enormous fraud.” The criticism of the historic leader has continued over the weeks against a government that he considers authoritarian.

“It is an authoritarian government, with a corrupt network around it, which includes the Armed Forces. Maduro is supported by the bayonet, not by the people. You will tell me that it is a risky support. And it is. Tomorrow a colonel Chaves will appear, angry with his generals, who knows why, and he will tear everything down and we will have to start dealing with that colonel,” declared the former president to the news program Subrayado on Channel 10.

“What I mean by this is that it is very difficult, but we must continue to apply pressure and demand. The system has never been more harassed. Even the allies themselves are now feeling uncomfortable because they realize that they are in a false position,” said Sanguinetti.

Former Uruguayan presidents Jose Mujica and Julio Maria Sanguinetti (EFE/ Alejandro Prieto)

With his comment, the former president was referring to the discomfort with Lula da Silva, whom he defines as “a democrat.” “He has had a kind of romantic leadership of the left, which establishes that complacency like they have with Cuba, which is a very sad totalitarianism, which has led that country to poverty,” he said.

Sanguinetti said that “even these countries” are beginning to worry about the political crisis in Venezuela. “I trust and hope that this pressure can open a gap. We must persist and not give up,” he said.

Before these statements, Sanguinetti had questioned in a column the position taken on this issue by the Frente Amplio, Uruguay’s left-wing coalition. “We have known for a long time that Venezuela is a dictatorship,” he wrote in the article.

Former Uruguayan President Julio Maria Sanguinetti questioned the regime of Nicolas Maduro (EFE/ Alex Gutierrez Paez)

Regarding international reactions, Sanguinetti said that the “authoritarian regimes” congratulated Nicolás Maduro and the democracies condemned the episode, he interpreted. And he continued with his international analysis: “Mexico already knows that it will accept the result because it announces that it will respect what the official electoral authority says. Brazil is an unknown, because although Lula had distanced himself from the arbitrary actions that vitiated the electoral process in substance, his foreign policy remains close to the old days of the cold war and the aged figures of ‘anti-imperialism’,” he pointed out.

“What is inexplicable and bordering on ridiculous is the attitude of our fellow countrymen who have returned to the old days of ‘wooden language’, when they travelled to Moscow and told of the wonders of the ‘other’ form of freedom,” he said.

Officially, the Frente Amplio stated in a statement that it “awaits the publication, by the National Electoral Council, of all the minutes with the data broken down by polling station, a fundamental element for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election results.”

Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou and former presidents José Mujica and Julio María Sanguinetti alongside Lula at the Brazilian president’s inauguration

For Sanguinetti, the Frente Amplio is in a “complex situation.” “They don’t know how to do it. The majority knows that the dictatorship is shameless and that the campaign alone constituted a fraud. No one here would accept what the courageous Venezuelan opposition has had to endure in order to move forward and try whatever was possible. They are trapped in an ostensible reality and that automatic alignment that puts them on one side as soon as the US is on the other,” he analyzed.

The Frente Amplio presidential candidate, Yamandú Orsi, said over the weekend that the process was “tainted” and “not very clear.” The candidate for the October elections asked that “an agreed and peaceful solution be sought again and again.” “There are two positions at the international level that more or less align. Those who add fuel to the fire, because they gain some benefit, and those who seek a peaceful solution,” he said.