Nicolás Maduro urges anyone who is scared by the warning of a “bloodbath” if he loses to drink chamomile

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Madurosaid on Tuesday that the warning that there will be a “bloodbath” in the Caribbean nation if it loses the presidential elections on July 28 was a “reflection” and – he added – that if anyone was scared by this statement, they should “have a chamomile tea.”

“I did not lie, I only made a reflection, whoever is scared should take a cup of chamomile because this people of Venezuela is cured of fear and knows what I am saying, and in Venezuela peace will triumph, popular power, the perfect civic-military-police union, (Javier) Milei will not come here,” said the president in a campaign event broadcast by the state channel VTV.

The president is responding to statements by his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, who, without mentioning him directly, said he was frightened when Maduro said that if he loses the elections on Sunday there will be “a bloodbath,” in an attempt, according to the opposition, to provoke abstention among those who advocate removing him from power.

“I was frightened by that statement,” Lula said in an interview with foreign correspondents, in which he revealed that he had spoken twice with Maduro to warn him that “if he wants to contribute to solving Venezuela’s growth problem and the return of those who left, he has to respect the democratic process.”

Lula, who has not hidden his differences with the Venezuelan president in recent months, added that in a democracy, “the one who loses gets a bath of votes, not a bath of blood,” and that “Maduro has to learn that when one wins, one stays, and when one loses, one leaves and prepares for other elections.”

President Maduro, who reiterates that he will remain in power, said that he has “saved” Venezuela from a “civil war” several times, without specifying when and under what circumstances.

“I said that if, denied and transmuted, the extremist right, Bolsonarists, followers of Milei and Hitler, came to political power in Venezuela, there would be a bloodbath, and I’m not saying this invented, it’s that we already lived through a bloodbath, on February 27 and 28 (1989, in reference to the well-known ‘Caracazo’),” he added.

Brazil will send two electoral observers to Venezuela for the presidential elections, as well as the former foreign minister and current advisor on International Affairs, Celso Amorim.