QCOSTARICA — Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro “leads a narco-state,” a “dictatorship,” and it is difficult for him to surrender power, said Costa Rica’s former president and Nobel Prize winner, Oscar Arias.
According to Arias, interviewed by EFE, what happened in Venezuela is something that does not surprise him. “Dictators don’t know how to get out of the presidential chair,” he stated.
Arias said that the elections of July 28 were “a farce” in which Maduro “stole” the triumph.
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“The exit polls showed opponent Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner. The Venezuelan people deserve the Government to be handed over to the winner but, unfortunately, I am very skeptical. It is not easy for a narco-state, knowing that they are going to rot in a dungeon, to hand over power,” Arias said.
“Unfortunately, what is going to happen with six more years of Maduro is that the people, already miserable, suffering from hunger, are going to become more and more impoverished. It is impossible, given the Chavista ideology, for that country to move forward, to consider foreign or domestic investment, to diversify the economy and end inflation,” he said.
Arias, who is 83, regretted that Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have not been emphatic when referring to the Venezuelan elections, although he clarified that it may be understandable if their intention is to be mediators.
“I believed that Mexico, Colombia and Brazil were going to tell Maduro: ’your choice was a robbery, you stole the election of the Venezuelan people and disrespected the will of the people expressed at the polls, you committed a fraud that cannot be hidden’, but I was wrong, they didn’t do that. I understand that if their role is to mediate, they can’t be that blunt,” he said.
Arias stated that there is “a very great discontent” with the Maduro Government and with Chavismo in general.
“The rulers of Venezuela (Hugo) Chávez and Maduro, have done a lot of damage. In Venezuela, killing a person is called homicide, but starving an entire people is called chavismo, and that’s what has happened. The best proof is that more than 7 million Venezuelans have left (emigrated),” Arias said.
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The government of Venezuela again insisted on Thursday, in front of several ambassadors, that the electoral records released by the opposition are false and intend to “ignore the results” of the presidential elections.
For its part, the largest opposition coalition, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), published on a website “83.5%” of the electoral records that, they insist, show the victory of their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, something that the Venezuelan government dismisses as “forged documents.”
The Venezuelan Attorney General announced last Wednesday an investigation for “conspiracy” and other crimes of the website where the majority opposition published the presidential election records.
In addition, the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office has initiated criminal proceedings against the opposition leaders for disseminating, on its website, the results demonstrating that it was González Urrutia who won in the presidential elections.
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The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela has not published the records that certify Maduro’s victory, as required by law, and left the process of “certifying” the official result in the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), at the request of the president.
Former President Arias said that “for a long time” in Venezuela there have been no independent institutions since they all follow Maduro’s orders.
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