Former Spanish President Felipe González said this Wednesday, during an interview on the Colombian television channel NTN24, that Venezuela is a “failed state” and that President Nicolás Maduro “has little capacity” as he has a “non-legitimate” government that “does not controls not even its own territory”.
“It does not control its own territory and they have depredated the country, they have liquidated everything, not just the freedom of the press or public liberties. They have liquidated autonomy and capacity for action,” said the former president.
In González's opinion, Maduro's fundamental problem “continues to be Venezuela, with the capacity to contagion to others, the latest events, the death of (Jesús) Santrich, which seems clearly confirmed, is part of the problem, because Maduro has decided to support Iván Márquez and Santrich, in the face of the dissidences that did not accept the peace agreements”.
In this sense, he insisted on the inability of the Venezuelan president to “recover initiatives that are not with a certain level of bastardism, of being involved with FARC dissidents, at the same time facing each other, or with the Hellenes who swear allegiance to Maduro or with the paracas of drug trafficking”.
According to the former president, the dissidents “rebeled” against Venezuela, giving rise to an armed conflict in the state of Apure, on the border with Colombia, which has been in the area since March 21, with an undetermined number of deaths, several missing and 8 kidnapped at the hands of irregular groups.
Maduro has decided, according to González, not to confront them and, for this reason, “at this moment, there are Venezuelan soldiers in the hands of these dissident groups and many of them have died, many civilians have been displaced.”
APPEALS TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
“I would like the international community that is interested in the restoration of Venezuelan democracy to act in coordination with a common denominator that they all say they accept,” which is “the restoration of freedom and democracy, in addition to urgent humanitarian and health aid.” , he pointed.
The US or the European Union, to which various countries have joined, “considered the election called illegitimate so that Maduro would have another term, they considered the election of the Assembly illegitimate”, therefore, there is no “legitimate representation”.
González, who criticized the formula for the election of the Executive and the Legislative, also rejected the operation of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), “which does not make decisions based on law,” but on partisan politics.
He asked the international community not to fall “into the regime's trap” of trying to legitimize itself with “regional elections, which must take place, but forgetting about an illegitimate presidential or parliamentary mandate”, because that is “legitimizing the dictatorship “.
GUAIDÓ'S PROPOSAL
González considered that some of the contents of the negotiation proposal put forward by opposition figure Juan Guaidó last week “are hardly debatable” because “the country needs an agreement to go to truly democratic elections.”
“Democratic elections are incompatible with the fact that there are still 330 or 340 political prisoners, a systematic violation of human rights, with the fact that the remains of the free press are being liquidated, in the midst of a pandemic, in which, to get a vaccine you have to carry what they call the homeland card,” he said, pointing out some of the opponent's requirements.
Regarding the lifting of sanctions, he said he agreed, as long as they are economic measures for the country, the consequences of which “citizens are paying and which serve as an excuse for the Government” to justify its management.
However, it does not approve the elimination of personal sanctions, because it considers that they are measures “for violation of human rights, for money laundering, for drug trafficking, for taking advantage of the country's resources to enrich oneself, etc.”
“Are you going to forgive a man who has taken 10,000 million dollars from the Venezuelan treasury so that he lives his whole life having stolen that? That is not legitimate,” added the Spanish politician, who doubted the provision of Maduro to accept an agreement with the conditions set by the opposition.
In his opinion, for the negotiations to take place, there must be an electoral schedule, a new electoral census, the release of political prisoners, freedom of political participation and freedom of the press, as well as guarantees of having massive humanitarian aid “without being manipulated and the regime preys on it”.