Caracas expels Spanish PP delegation from elections

Delegation People’s Party Went to Spain (PP) Venezuela Attending as an observer President election This Sunday Detained and deported from Caracas airportits members condemned.

The president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, denounced the situation on his X account. The PP leader demanded his “immediate release” and asked the Spanish government to provide the necessary means for this.

The delegation visited the Latin American country at the invitation of the Venezuelan opposition.

In another message, the PP leader assured that he is in contact with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. “The Venezuelan Democrats appreciate that we stand by them, despite the threats, to expose Maduro’s tyranny to the world. “It is the regime that is afraid: they know that the democratic spirit of the Venezuelan people is unstoppable.”He pointed out that according to the report Euronews.

At the invitation of former ambassador Edmundo González, MEP Esteban González Pons and the Popular Party’s congressional spokesman Miguel Tellado travelled to Caracas on Friday, July 26, leading a delegation composed of Macarena Montesinos, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Belén Hoyo Urrutia and María Corina Machado.

The two also invited the Spanish Senate’s Ibero-American Affairs Committee to witness the elections, a move supported by an upper house committee that initially all groups joined.

Terado released a video detailing what happened: “We cannot talk about democratic elections if there are not adequate safeguards in the process, if the results are not carefully respected, if the obligation to hand over power to the winner is not complied with”criticizing politicians.

According to official information from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the parliamentarians’ trip to Venezuela had previously been canceled by the Venezuelan authorities, so the delegation had previously been informed of this denial.

“Both the Senate and the People’s Party requested to be able to travel to Venezuela as an election observation delegation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not consider this request to be inconvenient and forwarded it to the Venezuelan authorities and handled all the procedures for this purpose.” “The Venezuelan authorities refused authorization,” they explained.

“The PP MPs were assisted by the Spanish consul general in Caracas, who was waiting for them at the airport to provide them with everything they needed,” the source added.

On Friday, two days before the election, Nicolas Maduro deepened the international community’s disregard for the process, even closing the country’s airspace. Blocking the arrival of a delegation of former Latin American presidentsThey were forced to abandon a commercial aircraft in Panama bound for the America’s Cup in Caracas.

Former Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso (1999-2004) was invited by Machado to serve as election observers in Venezuela, as were former presidents Vicente Fox (Mexico, 2000-2006), Jorge Tuto Quiroga (Bolivia, 2001-2002), Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (Costa Rica, 1998-2002) and former Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez (2018-2022).

After a tense wait, with passengers and former leaders already inside the aircraft, Moscoso told the passengers of the Copa flight that they were ordered to get off so the plane could take off.

“They just informed us that we had to get off the plane because this flight couldn’t take off unless we got off the plane,” the former president commented. The passengers were almost all Venezuelans, many of whom were returning to the country this Sunday (28th) to vote.

The former president, who is unable to travel, is part of the Democratic Initiative for Spain and the Americas (IDEA). In response, Diosdado Cabello, the former No. 2 of Chavismo, asserted: “Do they believe that people are coming here like this? We are scared when they arrive? What happens? We expel them. Because they are not invited (…) They are irrelevant, they are not coming here to mess around.”

Refusal to accept an international presence will This Sunday’s presidential election is an event with little or no international observation. Several local NGOs have already deployed operations, including the Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, the Education Congress and Voto Joven.

The Maduro government and the pro-democracy opposition, which gathered under a unified platform, signed an agreement in Barbados in October 2023. A central issue is allowing for widespread international observation of the elections.

In this document, as well as in previous and subsequent political dialogues, the presence of a European Union (EU) delegation, which has not monitored presidential elections in Venezuela since 2006, was highlighted as crucial.

Despite the Barbados Agreement, on 29 May The National Electoral Council (CNE), which is allied with the Maduro regime, withdrew its invitation to the community delegations.which, according to the discussion, would be the largest number locally.

He arrived in Caracas after three weeks of avoiding the European Union Carter Center advances, but confirms ‘reduced’ nature of its observing mission Before the July 28 election.

Then, on July 9, A team of four electoral experts from the United Nations has arrived to monitor the elections.but has not made any public statements and reports directly and exclusively to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

After the election was not observed internationally, Four days before the election, Brazil’s Federal Electoral Court Decision to cancel A small delegation of two experts was sent to Caracas. The decision comes in response to President Nicolas Maduro’s disqualification of the Brazilian and Colombian electoral systems during his campaign.

On July 24 of the same year, the election authority confirmed Withdrawal of invitation to former Argentine President Alberto Fernández to attend as an observerwho did you form an alliance with the day before? Statement from the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvaif Maduro loses at the polls, he should accept it as part of the rules of democracy.

In Caracas are former presidents who openly sympathize with Chavismo, such as the example of the Dominican Leonel Fernández and the Colombian Ernesto Samper. Fernández says the electoral process is taking place peacefully, saying he has been able to confirm the intention of the citizens to vote and the will of the state to guarantee this right of citizens.

According to a series of daily tracking by Consultores 21 and Delphos, two well-known Venezuelan companies, if 80% of voters come to the polls (that is, if there is a mass vote), opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia could be elected with double the votes of Maduro. Such forecasts have led observers to predict that there may be some situation on Sunday, which may try to suppress the presence of voters, but also mobilize Chavez voters using state resources.