Panama reiterates that it is willing to give asylum to Maduro to solve the crisis
EFE (via 14ymedio), Douglas Marín, San José / Panama City, 9 August 2024 — Nicolás Maduro “leads a narco-state,” a “dictatorship,” and it is difficult for him to surrender power, the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias declared this Friday . According to the politician, 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.
The 1987 Nobelist said that the elections of July 28 were “a farce” in which Maduro “stole” the triumph. “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 those 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 that 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 all the exit polls gave the opponent Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner, supported by the leader María Corina Machado, in a context in which there is “a ver