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August 15, 2024 – 00:52
Miami, Aug 14 (EFE).- A group of 32 former heads of state on Wednesday attacked the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico for joining the “purpose of dictator” Nicolás Maduro to “stay in power,” which is “scandalous” and represents a “true robbery of inter-American democratic rights.”
The former presidents, who are part of the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), also warned that Maduro even intends to promote new elections, an action that would “annul the popular will already expressed unequivocally” at the polls on July 28.
Such an action, IDEA continues, would ignore the “unquestionable defeat of the Maduro dictatorship,” as corroborated by technical reports from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center.
The group also refers to a report by a UN panel of experts which recognises that the opposition’s minutes “exhibit all the security devices of the original protocols of the election results.”
While the announcement of the result made by the Venezuelan National Council (CNE), which proclaimed Maduro the winner “without disclosing tabulated results to the candidates, is unprecedented in contemporary democratic elections.”
According to the former heads of government, the UN and the OAS have established that the administration of justice in Venezuela “totally lacks independence and impartiality and is a necessary accomplice in the crimes against humanity that are currently before the International Criminal Court.”
IDEA reported that there are now thousands of prisoners and missing persons, with a significant number of murders and torture following the last presidential elections.
He argues that the Venezuelan dictatorship also intends to “dilute the legal responsibility of those who falsified the election results” through the intervention of the Electoral Power, the Supreme Court of Justice, the top brass of the Armed Forces and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“If the aforementioned governments tolerate the plans of the Venezuelan dictator and his allied public powers, they compromise respect for universal democratic behavior and do so before their own nations,” the IDEA statement said.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro’s victory for a third consecutive term has been rejected and described as “fraud” by the majority opposition and questioned by several foreign governments and international monitoring groups.
The declaration was signed by former presidents of Costa Rica Oscar Arias, Carlos Alvarado, Rafael Angel Calderon, Laura Chinchilla, Jose Maria Figueres, Miguel Angel Rodriguez and Luis Guillermo Solis; of Spain Jose Maria Aznar and Mariano Rajoy; of Mexico Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon; of Colombia Ivan Duque, Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe; and of Argentina Mauricio Macri.
It was also signed by former presidents Mario Abdo Benítez, Federico Franco and Juan Carlos Wasmosy (Paraguay); Nicolás Ardito, Mireya Moscoso and Ernesto Pérez Valladares (Panama); Alfredo Cristiani (El Salvador); Eduardo Frei (Chile); Osvaldo Hurtado, Guillermo Lasso, Jamil Mahuad and Lenin Moreno (Ecuador); Hipólito Mejía (Dominican Republic); Julio María Sanguinetti and Luis Alberto Lacalle (Uruguay), and Carlos Mesa and Jorge Tuto Quiroga (Bolivia). EFE
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