He didn’t even get on the plane when they were already telling him to get off. Former Argentine President Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) will not travel to Venezuela, where he was going to act as an international observer in the elections that will be held next Sunday, after denouncing that the Administration of Nicolás Maduro asked him not to do so.
“Yesterday, the Venezuelan national government informed me of its desire that I not travel and desist from fulfilling the task that had been entrusted to me by the National Electoral Council,” the former Peronist president published on his official account on the social network X, where he showed the invitation letter from the CNE.
According to Fernández, the Chavista administration considered that the statements he made on an Argentine radio station “caused discomfort and generated doubts” about his “impartiality” and that his coincidence with the statements of the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “generated a kind of destabilization of the electoral process.”
In the interview on the Argentine radio station Radio con Vos, the Peronist politician called for “respect for the democratic process” in Venezuela and said that if Maduro were to lose the elections, in which he is seeking his third consecutive six-year term, “what he has to do is accept it.”
Fernández expressed his incomprehension on Wednesday at the “serious discontent” of the Venezuelan authorities, and that is why, “in the face of the unusual demand,” he decided not to travel to avoid being accused of “wanting to cloud a crucial election day.”
“An election observer must monitor compliance with the established rules throughout the electoral process, in an objective, impartial and transparent manner. That was my only purpose. I would have liked to be able to do so, but I feel that in the context created I will not be able to fully fulfill that task,” he posted.
The former Argentine president expressed his hope that Venezuela, “which in recent years has been besieged by threats of invasion and its economy damaged by a brutal blockade,” will hold elections “in a transparent manner and that the popular verdict will be respected whatever the result.”
According to what was stated in the interview on Wednesday, Fernández was going to travel this Wednesday and had been summoned together with the former president of the Government of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2011).
From his position as president of Argentina and pro tempore leader (2022-2023) of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Fernández advocated for dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition and participated in rounds of contact alongside his then counterparts from France, Emmanuel Macron, and Colombia, Gustavo Petro.
Venezuela’s CNE said on Monday that its voting system is “protected” in terms of the inviolability and secrecy of voting in view of the elections.
The Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) has questioned the CNE, which is controlled by people close to Chavez, during the campaign.
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2024-09-23 07:37:10
