González Urrutia thanks Mulino for having Venezuela “as a cause always present”

Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia thanked Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino this Sunday for having the South American country “as a cause always present”, after the president expressed his hope that “soon” the anti-Chavista would join the Mercosur negotiating table as the ruler of a “democratic Venezuela”. “Grateful to you, President Mulino, for always having Venezuela as a present cause. You perfectly understand the danger of not having peace in the region, your defense of our country, of freedom and the return to democracy is the defense of a true democrat,” he wrote on the social network X. González Urrutia also thanked Panama, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru “for their commitment to the region’s democracy”.

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This group of nations signed on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Mercosur summit, a declaration that calls on Venezuela to “reestablish” democratic order “by peaceful means”. During his intervention at the summit in Brazil, the Panamanian head of state recalled that the records of the July 28, 2024 elections, which, according to the Venezuelan opposition, give the presidential victory to González Urrutia, are kept under custody at the National Bank of his country. The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela, controlled by the ruling party, proclaimed the victory of Nicolás Maduro as re-elected president, without publishing the detailed results of this process. Mulino stated to his South American colleagues that he hopes “in due course” to be able to deliver the documents “with a hug” to González Urrutia, “when he is already in power in a democratic Venezuela”. In the opinion of the Panamanian president, “it’s a shame” that a nation “full” of human and natural resources like Venezuela is suspended from Mercosur “for not respecting democratic principles”. Venezuela joined Mercosur in 2012 but was suspended in December 2016 because it failed to comply with some obligations of the alliance, an isolation that increased in August 2017, when the bloc applied a “political suspension” for considering that “a serious breakdown of the democratic order occurred” in the country. Mulino signed, along with his colleagues from Argentina, Javier Milei, and Paraguay, Santiago Peña, and authorities from Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru present at the Mercosur summit, the declaration in which they also call for guaranteeing “unrestricted respect for human rights” in Venezuela. Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado also thanked these six countries this Sunday for “their commitment to democracy and human rights” in the Caribbean country.