[ad_1]
St. Joseph — In an interview with EFE, former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias said that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is a “dictatorship” and a “narco-state,” which is why he thinks it will be difficult to get him to hand over power.
“I feel very sad, but it’s nothing I didn’t imagine. It’s not surprising. I expected it because the dictator doesn’t know how to get rid of the presidency and, besides, there is a very peculiar thing about the Venezuelan government, which is that it is a narco-state,” Arias declared.
The 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner assured that Venezuela’s July 28 elections were a “farce,” that Maduro “stole” the victory and that the Venezuelan people “did not deserve” it.
“The Venezuelan people should hand over the government to the winner, but unfortunately, I highly doubt it. It’s not easy for a narco-state to hand over power knowing they will rot in their dungeons,” Arias said.
The Costa Rican president, who was in power between 1986 and 1990 and 2006 and 2010, believes it will be “difficult” for Maduro to step down, but he remains hopeful that things can change because it is “impossible” to bring Venezuela under a dictatorship like Maduro’s.
“Unfortunately, what will happen with another six years of Maduro is that these people who are already miserable and suffering from hunger will become even poorer. It is impossible, with the Chavista ideology, to lead this country (forward) to consider foreign investments, domestic investments, through which the economy can be diversified and inflation can be ended,” he asserted.
Arias, 83, expressed regret that Mexico, Colombia and Brazil had not been as outspoken in reference to the Venezuelan elections, though he clarified that this might be understandable if their intention was to act as mediators.
“I believed that Mexico, Colombia and Brazil would tell Maduro: ‘Your election was a robbery, you stole the election from the Venezuelan people by not respecting the will of the Venezuelan people expressed at the vote, you committed a fraud that could not be hidden,’ but I was wrong, they didn’t. I understand that if their role was to mediate, they wouldn’t have to be so blunt,” he said.
“In Venezuela (…) starving an entire population is called Chavismo”
Arias assured that in all the polls, opponent Edmundo González wins with the support of leader María Corina Machado, while the Maduro government and Chavismo in general are “very unhappy”.
«Venezuela’s rulers (Hugo) Chavez (now deceased) and Maduro have done a lot of damage. In Venezuela, killing one person is called homicide, but starving an entire population is called Chavismo, and that’s what has happened. The best example of this is the departure (of emigrants) of more than 7 million Venezuelans,” he said.
Venezuela’s government on Thursday denounced before ambassadors the electoral record published by anti-Chavezism as a falsehood and an attempt to “ignore the results of the presidential election” in which the electoral body approved Nicolás Maduro as the winner, a victory that was questioned both inside the country and abroad.
For its part, the largest opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Platform (PUD), revealed on its website “83.5%” of electoral records that they insist show the victory of their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, but which the Venezuelan government rejects as “falsified documents.”
Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office announced last Wednesday that it had launched an investigation into a majority opposition website that disclosed minutes of presidential election meetings for alleged “conspiracy” and other crimes.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to publish the minutes of its meeting certifying Maduro’s victory, as required by law, and has handed the “certification” process of the official results to the leader of the Supreme Court (TSJ) upon request.
Former President Arias said Venezuela had no independent institutions “for a long time” because they all followed Maduro’s orders.
(dynamic)
[ad_2]
Source link
