Venezuelan opposition condemns AMLO’s silence on Maduro

BOGOTA, Col. (Process).- Venezuelan opposition leader Delsa Solórzano, who is in charge of the vote defense operation for candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, says that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador should demand that his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro respect the popular will expressed at the polls in next Sunday’s elections.

López Obrador, says the member of González Urrutia’s campaign team, has maintained “a complicit silence in the face of the dictatorship in Venezuela,” while other leftist presidents in the region, such as Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, have asked Maduro to respect the vote.

“I ask López Obrador, on behalf of the opposition and millions of citizens who want a change in this country, that if he wants to go down in history as a democrat, he should speak out and demand that Maduro respect the results that will be produced in these elections,” Solórzano told Process.

For the former congresswoman and spokesperson for the campaign of opposition presidential candidate González Urrutia, “the desire for change in Venezuela is so clear” that even the democratic left in Latin America is distancing itself “from a dictator who is clinging to power and is capable of anything.”

Unfortunately, he points out, López Obrador has not been part of this group of leftist presidents who are calling for democracy in Venezuela and clean and transparent elections.

Solórzano reproaches the Mexican president for his lack of interest in the elections in Venezuela and “his support for the dictatorship,” despite the importance of everything that happens in that country at a hemispheric level due to the number of migrants it expels each year to Colombia, Peru, Chile, Mexico and the United States.

He also believes that the Mexican president has erected a “wall” in his country against Venezuelan migrants seeking to reach the United States.

In that sense, he says, López Obrador went “beyond” former US President Donald Trump, who promised that during his government (2017-2021) he would build a wall against immigration on the border with Mexico and failed in that purpose because he never carried out that project, which had incipient progress.

“What Trump did not do (the wall) was done by López Obrador with Venezuelan migrants and Latin Americans in general, who are mistreated and have their human rights violated by the Mexican Immigration, the police, the military, and are made victims of corruption, because the Mexican authorities are very corrupt,” says the lawyer and opposition leader.

And he says that he has “many testimonies” from Venezuelan migrants that support his claims.

For Solórzano, the fact that starting in October a woman, Claudia Sheinbaum, will become president of Mexico, opens the possibility that “there will be more sensitivity regarding these issues that have to do with violations of human rights (in the case of Venezuelan migrants) and with respect for fundamental guarantees, such as respect for the vote (in the case of this Sunday’s elections).”

The shielding

As head of the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD)’s vote defense command, Solórzano has been in charge of organizing the operation that the political coalition, led by María Corina Machado and whose candidate is González Urrutia, will implement to “prevent electoral fraud” by Chavismo.

According to the lawyer and representative of the PUD before the National Electoral Council (CNE), the Venezuelan opposition will have 90 thousand witnesses placed in the 30 thousand 026 voting tables that will be installed in the country this Sunday, who must have copies of the minutes that are prepared at the end of the day.

He says there will also be a million volunteers who will be monitoring the development of events to assist with logistical tasks, such as feeding witnesses, transporting them and reporting any irregularities.

“We have never seen so many people committed to change and willing to do their part to make it happen, not only with their vote, but also with their active participation in the process,” said the opposition leader.

But at the same time he warns: “In Venezuela we live in a dictatorship that is capable of anything, that has already resorted to violence in the past and has shown that illegality is its way of acting, but I hope that on Monday (29) Edmundo González Urrutia, who will be the winner, and Nicolás Maduro, sit down to talk to make a calm and peaceful transition.”

All the polls from well-known firms agree that González Urrutia is ahead of Maduro by at least 20 to 30 percentage points, and that the unpopularity levels of the Chavista leader exceed 70 percent.

Leaders rebuke Maduro

In recent days, several left-wing leaders in the region have raised their voices against Maduro, who has made statements that seem to reveal his refusal to leave power, whatever the result of this Sunday’s elections. He has said, for example, that there could be a “bloodbath” and a “civil war” in Venezuela if he loses the elections.

On Monday, Brazilian President Lula da Silva said he was frightened by Maduro’s statement and said the Chavista leader “has to learn: when you win, you stay; when you lose, you leave.”

Lula’s statement was echoed by former Argentine President Alberto Fernández, who said:

In a democracy, when the people cast their vote, the winner wins, and the loser loses, and if the government is eventually defeated, it must accept the popular verdict.

The CNE, which had invited Fernández to observe the elections, informed him last Tuesday that he was no longer welcome.

Last Thursday, Chilean President Gabriel Boric backed Lula and Fernández’s calls for Maduro to respect the popular will “for the good of Venezuela and all of Latin America.”

According to Boric, if Chavismo does not accept the results of this Sunday, Venezuela “would be left in a totally discredited position before the entire international community.”

For the Chilean president, the important thing is that Latin America acts “in consensus with the international community” and “I have no doubt that, in particular with Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, we will have the same position in demanding respect for popular sovereignty.”

Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in Colombian history, last April criticized the decision of the Chavista regime to disqualify María Corina Machado as an opposition presidential candidate – that measure led her to support González Urrutia as the standard-bearer of the Unitary Platform – which irritated the Maduro government.

Today, Friday 26th, Petro said that the “democratic decisions” of Venezuelans will be respected by his government.

“It is very painful that López Obrador remains silent,” says Solórzano.