Panama summons Venezuelan representative for failing to take off with ex-president

07-27-24.- The Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned this Friday “representatives of the Venezuelan diplomatic corps” because a plane carrying several former presidents to Venezuela to participate as observers in the elections of next Sunday could not take off.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned representatives of the Venezuelan diplomatic mission in Panama to the Bolivar Palace (headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs),” Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha said in his X account, citing a source from the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The president reported the plane’s imminent departure.

Panamanian President José Raul Mulino reported that the Copa America plane carrying former Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso and other former presidents to Venezuela “was not allowed to take off from Tocumen while they remained on board due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace.” Perhaps another American Airlines flight from Caracas to Panama was not allowed to take off.

The former presidents are all members of the Freedom and Democracy group, which, in addition to Moscoso, includes Dominican President Luis Abinader, former Spanish government presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, and former presidents Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay; Jeanine Áñez and Jorge Quiroga, from Bolivia; Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox, from Mexico, and Iván Duque and Andrés Pastrana, from Colombia.

The initiative was also presented by former presidents Oswaldo Hurtado, Jamil Mahuad and Guillermo Lasso, from Ecuador; Rafael Calderón and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, from Costa Rica; Mauricio Macri, from Argentina; as well as Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and former Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño.

Caracas decided to prevent some of them from leaving Panama after the Freedom and Democracy Organization said in a statement on Wednesday that any attempt at fraud in Venezuela’s presidential election must be sanctioned by the international community.

Ten candidates will take part in Sunday’s election, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia, the standard-bearer of the opposition coalition Democratic Unity Platform (PUD), who leads the vote in favor of replacing the disqualified María Corina Machado, according to traditional pollsters.