The president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, asked this Tuesday Mercosur, a bloc completed by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, “raise your voice” to condemn the disqualification of Venezuelan opposition member María Corina Machado.
“A healthy democracy will not emerge from Venezuela”, if to “a candidate with enormous potential is disqualified for political rather than legal reasons”, stated Lacalle Pou at the LXII Summit of Mercosur Heads of State, which is being held in Puerto Iguazú.
In this sense, the Uruguayan president sued his other three partners of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) “try to be objective” with the situation in Venezuela. Machado, registered to participate in the primaries next October in Venezuela, prior to the 2024 presidential elections, was recently disqualified from competing for a popular election position for 15 years.
“We would do Venezuelan democracy a disservice if we do not raise our voices (…) Mercosur has to give a clear signal so that the Venezuelan people can move towards full democracy, which clearly does not have it”, he pointed out.
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Also participating in the summit are the rulers of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; from Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, and from Argentina, Alberto Fernández; in addition to Luis Arce, president of Bolivia, an associated State and in the process of accession.
Abdo Benítez also denounced in his speech the “political restrictions” in Venezuela, also alluding to the disqualification of Machado.
“When a way out appears, an itinerary of hope with the holding of elections with the opposition, we quickly saw that illusion extinguished with the disqualification of María Corina Machado”, said the Paraguayan ruler.
Lula and Fernández, who defend the return of Venezuela to Mercosur, from which it was suspended in 2017 for a “breakdown of the democratic order”, according to the partners then alleged, did not mention the political situation of the Caribbean country in their speeches.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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