RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López asked Peruvians on Saturday not to repeat the “political disaster” of Venezuela in the presidential elections to be held on Sunday, June 6, between Pedro Castillo (left) and Keiko Fujimori (right).
During his participation in the forum “Threats to Democracies”, organized in Lima by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the association Invertir Libertad, López assured that he arrived in the Peruvian capital “from the future” to warn of the danger represented by Castillo’s candidacy.
For López, the political project proposed by Castillo is similar to that of the late Venezuelan ex-President Hugo Chávez when he proposes to call for a Constituent Assembly to reform the State and an economic model that has not solved the social gaps.
“We come from the future. We live the consequences of the model that today is presented elsewhere as national salvation. That model is hunger, destruction of the economy, and loss of employment. It is a model that can be presented as vindication and revenge for what has happened, but what is coming is worse,” Lopez related.
“We have to prevent any other country from following the path that Venezuela has taken”, he added.
The Venezuelan opponent, about whom Venezuela has recently requested his extradition from Spain, assured that Venezuela went from being the most prosperous country in Latin America to be the poorest, ahead even of Haiti.
“A war or a natural disaster did not destroy it, but by political disaster, a political model and a dictatorship that turned into tyranny. It was destroyed in front of the whole world. When few of us denounced it, they told us that we were exaggerating, ” commented López.
EVERY VENEZUELAN, A TESTIMONY
For this reason, the politician advised Peruvians to listen to the testimonies of the nearly one million Venezuelans currently residing in Peru, part of the 4.6 million that, according to UNHCR, have left Venezuela in recent years due to the country’s severe economic crisis.
“Every Venezuelan who is on the streets of Lima has a testimony of why they left our country. Let them know that they are not here by choice. They are here because they were expelled from their country,” said Lopez.
CONTROVERSIAL PASSAGE THROUGH IMMIGRATION
Lopez’s intervention started almost four hours late due to immigration problems, as he lacked the special visa that Peru requires from all Venezuelans to enter its territory.
This circumstance was solved with an authorization issued in a matter of hours by the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in previous weeks had denounced as interference in the elections the manifestations of ex-Presidents of Bolivia (Evo Morales) and Uruguay (José Mujica) in favor of Castillo.