The former heads of State and Government who make up the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA) denounced that the presidential elections in Venezuela will be held – without institutional or electoral guarantees and with the total absence of a democratic and constitutional rule of law.
Twenty-seven former presidents who are members of this group, including Panamanians Mireya Moscoso, Nicolás Ardito Barletta and Ernesto Pérez Balladares, remain vigilant for President Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship to resist the popular will on July 28.
IDEA members echoed the panorama that is glimpsed on the electoral day of this country. The exclusion of the right to vote of the nearly 8 million Venezuelans who have migrated and the participation of qualified electoral observation of the Organization of American States (OAS) is notorious, they said.
We note that popular sovereignty has taken its own channel and is being manifested actively and massively to assert its right to vote, so that it is respected and thus rescue all the freedoms that have been confiscated from Venezuelans by the Maduro regime, reads in the statement released on Wednesday, June 19.
The group warned that the ignorance of the majority democratic will, if it happens, will represent a serious and integral attack on the essential and fundamental elements of democracy that will force American and European nations to take the necessary safeguard measures.
Finally, they said they will be very vigilant and vigilant of the process in Venezuela’s presidential elections.
A total of 21,620,705 people are eligible to vote in Venezuela’s presidential elections on July 28, according to the Venezuelan Electoral Gazette.
The former heads of state that is a member of the ICDEA Group are:
José María Aznar, Spain
Nicolas Ardito Barletta, Panama
Felipe Calderón, Mexico
Rafael Ángel Calderón, Costa Rica
Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica
Alfredo Cristiani, El Salvador
Vicente Fox Q., Mexico
Federico Franco, Paraguay
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Chile
Osvaldo Hurtado L., Ecuador
Luis Alberto Lacalle H., Uruguay
Guillermo Lasso M, Ecuador
Mauricio Macri, Argentina
Jamil Mahuad W., Ecuador
Carlos Mesa G., Bolivia
Lenin Moreno, Ecuador
Mireya Moscoso, Panama
Andrés Pastrana, Colombia
Ernesto Pérez Balladares, Panama
Jorge Tuto Quiroga, Bolivia
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez E., Costa Rica
Julio María Sanguinetti, Uruguay
Luis Guillermo Solís, Costa Rica
Álvaro Uribe V., Colombia
Juan Carlos Wasmosy, Paraguay
This article has been translated after first appearing in La Estrella