Portuguese MEP Sebastião Bugalho said on Saturday he was “hurt, offended and worried about what might happen” in Sunday’s presidential elections in Venezuela after the European People’s Party (PPE) delegation he was part of was expelled from the country.
“As a Portuguese, I am offended, hurt and worried about what could happen tomorrow in Venezuela. [domingo]”Because as a Portuguese MEP I have to defend democracy, human rights and free and transparent elections. What free and transparent country expels people before elections? No,” Sebastián Bugallo said in a statement to the Spanish press in Madrid, broadcast by RTP.
On Friday, a delegation from the European People’s Party (EPP), which was going to monitor the presidential elections in Venezuela at the invitation of the country’s political opposition, was first stuck at the Caracas airport and then expelled from Venezuela, the Spanish agency EFE reported, citing sources in the FIZ.
In statements to the Spanish press, Bugallo denied that the PPE delegation had come as “election observers.”
PPE sources told Spanish news agency EFE that the reason they were not allowed in was because they voted on a number of resolutions in the European Parliament.
“I was voted out when I was elected a month ago, it’s deeply ridiculous,” says Sebastian Bugalho.
Today, upon arrival in Madrid, a delegation of MEPs, MPs and senators from the Spanish People’s Party (PP) criticised the government of Socialist Pedro Sánchez and the position of former Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero towards the Venezuelan government.
“We are witnessing a dictatorship that is rotting and collapsing,” MEP Esteban González Pons, who is responsible for international affairs for the PP, said in a statement to journalists.
The PP leader explained that three different groups had come – one from the European Parliament, another from Congress and another from the Senate – in response to “official invitations” from the Venezuelan opposition to “accompany them” in Sunday’s presidential elections.
They did not gather as “international observers,” which, according to Venezuelan law, requires recognition as an electoral body, González Pons emphasized, indicating that he had informed both the Foreign Ministry and the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, as well as the Venezuelan ambassadors in Brussels and Madrid.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry clarified on Friday that Venezuela had not authorized the visit of a delegation from the Spanish Senate as an election observation mission and that only the PP [Partido Popular] decided to make the trip, official sources said.
Several international delegations, in addition to the group of the European People’s Party (PPE), of which the MEP elected by the Democratic Alliance (AD, PSD/CDS-PP coalition) Sebastián Bugallo was a member, were not allowed to enter Venezuela to participate in the presidential elections on Sunday, EFE reported today.
More than 21 million Venezuelans have the right to vote in this presidential election, whose campaign has been marked by an atmosphere of great tension in the country, in the midst of an economic, social and political crisis.
The current head of state of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (UPV), will run for the third time for another six-year term.
Maduro faces Edmundo González Urrutia (Table of Democratic Unity/MUD), the opposition candidate who leads in most polls, although the president’s party has discounted them as rigged.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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