Venezuela has prevented the entry of a delegation of lawmakers from the Spanish People's Party (PP) who had attended Sunday's elections as observers and who did not have the permission of the government of Nicolás Maduro, who was subsequently expelled.
The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, announced on social networks that the delegation was “detained” at the Caracas airport and requested their “immediate release” and the intervention of the Spanish government. “I have just learned that the PP delegation, made up of ten deputies, senators and European parliamentarians, is being detained by the Maduro regime at the Caracas airport. I demand their immediate release and that the Spanish government provide the necessary resources for this purpose,” said Núñez Feijóo.
The travel request was rejected by the Venezuelan authorities
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs then explained that Venezuela had not authorized the visit of a delegation from the Senate and the Popular Parliamentary Group as an electoral observation mission and that only the PP decided to make the trip, according to official sources. “Both the Senate Table and the GPP have requested to go to Venezuela as an electoral observation mission. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not see any inconvenience in this request and has transferred and carried out all the procedures with the Venezuelan authorities for this purpose. The Venezuelan authorities have refused the authorization. The Senate and the GPP have been informed of all this, including the inadmissibility of this request by Venezuela. Therefore, all the political groups, except the PP, have decided not to make the trip”, they explained from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
PP sources, in turn, assure that “local authorities have informed them that they are prohibited from entering the country and that they will be deported.”
The parliamentarians, who had been invited by the Venezuelan opposition, were later “expelled on another plane”, European People's Party (EPP) sources told EFE, specifying that the reason they were not allowed in was because they had voted on a series of resolutions in the European Parliament.
González Pons, Miguel Tellado and Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo
Deputies, MEPs and senators from the PP had traveled to Venezuela to witness the presidential elections this Sunday between President Maduro and the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), led by former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia.
MEP Esteban González Pons and PP spokesman in Congress Miguel Tellado flew to Caracas on Friday and led this delegation made up of Macarena Montesinos, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo and Belén Hoyo, who came at the invitation of González Urrutia and opposition leader María Corina Machado.
Both also invited the Senate's Ibero-American Affairs Commission to witness the elections, an initiative supported by the upper house and initially joined by all the groups. In the end, only the commission's president, the Popular Juanjo Matarí, and the spokesman appointed by the Popular Group, Alfonso Serrano, traveled.
The PP leader declared on Friday morning that the elections must be “fair and free,” a message he also sent to Venezuela’s “democratic opposition,” which he met last week in Madrid and which has the PP’s support. The popular parliamentarians were attended by the Spanish Consul General in Caracas, who was waiting for them at the airport “to provide them with everything they need,” according to the Foreign Ministry.
GPP spokesman Miguel Tellado, who was in the delegation, denounced the “slamming of the door” by the tyrant to the public representatives of a democratic country, because “Chavismo does not want witnesses, nor does it want the international community to have eyes and ears in Venezuela” in the presidential elections next Sunday.