Padrino López on elections: “Whoever loses should go and rest and that’s it”

The Minister of Defense of the Nicolás Maduro administration, Vladimir Padrino López, assured that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) will defend the Constitution and popular sovereignty in the presidential elections on July 28 and noted that the one who lost should rest and the one who won should work on his government plan.

“The one who won must get on top of his government project and the one who lost must go and rest. That’s all,” Padrino López said in a statement posted on the social network X.

Four days before the elections, the Minister of Defense added that the FANB will defend the Constitution and the sovereignty of the people. “To the keyboard politicians, the ‘pollsters’ and other schemers who ask themselves: What is the FANB going to do on July 28? To them we respond that we will do what we have always done: defend the Constitution and popular sovereignty. Make no mistake.”

The minister, through a video that accompanied the publication, added that the military will wait for the decision of the Venezuelans, which will be announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE). Padrino López criticized that “extremist factors of the opposition” intend to lead the FANB to “old schemes that obeyed imperialism.”

On July 21, Nicolás Maduro said that he has the support of the FANB and its members in the run-up to the presidential elections, in which he is seeking re-election.

“I have the experience, I am prepared, I have this beautiful and brave people, I have the support of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and the military, I have the support of the civic-military-police union, I am Nicolás Maduro Moros and I will win the presidential elections next Sunday, July 28,” he said in the state of Barinas.

According to Article 328 of the Constitution, the Armed Forces “constitute an essentially professional institution, without political militancy” and indicate that, in “the fulfillment of its functions, it is at the exclusive service of the nation and in no case at the service of any person or political party.”

On July 5, the candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González Urrutia, promised to modernize the FANB, as well as to fulfill the professional aspirations of the Venezuelan military.

“Soldiers of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, for this reason the Venezuelan people ask you to respect the results of your electoral decision (…) the Venezuelan people count on your military institution to respect and enforce its sovereign will on July 28,” it said in a statement.