How different the truth can be depending on who says it. Even if the setting is the same and the protagonists too. On Tuesday, at the Ateneo de Madrid, he reappeared José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero after two months of silence. And he boasted of having “participated” in the departure of Edmundo Gonzalez of Venezuela, thanks to its “connection” with Nicolas Maduro.
Thursday, he walked on the same boards Alberto Nuñez Feijóo and condemned the former president: “He worked for Edmundo’s departure, I will work for Maduro to leave.”
In this sentence, and in the absence of “president-elect” González Urrutia during the main event in support of the Venezuelan democratic opposition, organized at the Ateneo de Madrid by the Popular Party, the three-quarters of an hour of conversation between the president is summary of the PP and Maria Corina Machadowhich took place live by videoconference.
The first task that Feijóo sets for himself is “to demand that the government denounce Maduro before the International Criminal Court“, so that an arrest warrant is issued against him for the repression against the Venezuelan people.
As this newspaper learned, the PP leadership has not yet decided when it will take the initiative to Congress. If they do, They challenge “the partners” of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive to vote against democracyor do like the PNV in Congress, supporting the recognition of the opposition candidate as winner of the presidential election. Official sources assure that the initiative will reach the Cortes depending on the government’s response.
“There is only one way out, to recognize the defeat of Maduro and the victory of the opposition,” said the popular leader. “It must be said not with conviction, but with certainty, Edmundo won elections.”
Feijóo himself acknowledged that it was “striking” to see how democratic opposition was capable of winning “by the rules” of the dictatorduring the elections of July 28. “The international community has asked Venezuelans to reach a democratic solution, and now that they have, it is our turn to rise to the occasion, because they risked everything to be able to vote.”
According to the Popular Party, the time has come to redouble diplomatic and civil pressure on a regime “weaker than ever”. Machado agrees with this diagnosis: “Let’s look at July 27 and now, Maduro has not found an ally; and yes, he lost a lot“.
Furthermore, the leader of the democratic opposition, from Caracas, warned that “if we obtained the minutes, it is because we had the complicity of the Armed Forces”, of its agents distributed in all the offices voting. “To Maduro now All that remains is the high-ranking officers, who use repression to control the soldiers,” he said. “All of Venezuela is united and on January 10 we will invest Edmundo González as president.”
“Friends of the regime”
Precisely, Feijóo underlined that there is “more and more repression” as a symptom of “the greatest weakness” of the regime, which “has taken flight forward”. And he committed his work, that of his party and that of the “Spanish people” to the fight for freedoms and democracy in Venezuela.
“The majority of the Spanish people,” he declared after declaring himself the winner – too – of the July 2023 elections, “will not let the Venezuelan people down”.
And, again referring to Zapatero and Sánchez, he declared that “even the friends of the Venezuelan regime are disconcerted, silent and ashamed“, this is why the PP will “redouble diplomatic pressure in the rest of the world”, in concert with its European formation.
“We have already convinced all our European colleagues, especially those who are further away and who do not have Venezuela as present as we do,” he said. have González Urrutia recognized by the European Parliament as “president-elect”. Because, he said, everyone understood that between tyranny and democracy, between freedom and repression, “we cannot be lukewarm”.
For Feijóo, “history will treat these lukewarm and equidistant peoples very badly.” And he regretted that, although the PP defended freedom, the rule of law, democracy and that the winner of the elections governed, “the government has not been on the side of the Venezuelan democrats”.
