Venezuela canceled the invitation to the EU to send an electoral observation mission

Elvis Amoroso, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), reported that the electoral body cancelled the invitation to the European Union (EU) to send an observation mission for the presidential elections on July 28, due to the ratification of sanctions by the community bloc once morest members of the Government and the ruling party.

“The Electoral Power revokes and renders void the invitation it extended to the EU to participate through a monitoring mission,” said Amoroso, two months before the elections and shortly following the president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, requested the annulment.

The CNE made this decision “based” on the exercise of its “sovereignty” and taking into account the “incalculable financial damage that has been caused to the people (by the sanctions), affecting the health of children and the elderly,” said the president of the entity, despite the fact that the measures applied by the EU are strictly personal, so they do not affect Venezuelan state companies or public assets that harm the citizens.

On sanctions

Amoroso also said that the sanctions prevent “access to medicines and food, and also affect education, sports, and the economy, restricting entrepreneurs from acquiring raw materials and supplies that are necessary and needed by the national industry, as well as limiting the exercise and principle of economic freedom and its contribution to the development of the nation.”

The sanctions – Amoroso reiterated – generated “the loss of 125 billion dollars that, without a doubt, were intended for social investment,” a statement that, in no case, implicates the EU, which did not apply economic measures to the country, but rather individuals, including the president of the CNE himself, who recently rejected the lifting of its restrictions.

“The CNE demands that the EU proceed to fully lift the unilateral and genocidal coercive sanctions imposed on our people and cease its hostile stance once morest Venezuela,” he insisted.

In his opinion, it would be “immoral” to allow the participation of the EU “knowing its neocolonialist and interventionist practices once morest Venezuela”, even though Venezuela did accept an observation mission from the 27 in the regional elections of 2021, when the same measures were in place.

The decision, he said, “will be immediately communicated to the EU so that they understand that they are not welcome to come to this country while the genocidal sanctions remain in place.”

*With information from EFE*