Venezuela’s Maduro challenges presidents of Uruguay and Paraguay to debate

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused his Uruguayan and Paraguayan counterparts of attacking and provoking him during the 6th summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and challenged them to debate on democracy.

From the international airport in Mexico City, where the summit took place on Saturday, Maduro said he was the victim of “provocation and aggression” by Presidents Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay and Mario Abdo Benitez Paraguay.

Shortly before boarding a state airline Conviasa that would take him back to Venezuela, the president challenged Lacalle Pou and Abdo Benítez to a public debate.

“If they want to debate true democracy, we have how to demonstrate with our people… The challenge is on the table. Where they want, when they want, and how they want,” he said.

“I had a truckload of stones. If I had taken out the truck of stones, then imagine, we destroyed the great achievements of the CELAC summit. Some were interested in the CELAC summit failing. They were rubbing their hands together so that it would fail so that we would confront each other,” he added.

Maduro congratulated the Mexican government for the organization of the summit and assured that it was a “total success” because a pronouncement against the US sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba was achieved, as well as a consensus of the 32 countries of the bloc on a plan to face the pandemic and the creation of a fund to attend natural disasters.

The ruler arrived surprisingly in Mexico on Friday night with his wife Cilia Flores and his son Nicolás Maduro Guerra after it had been announced that he would not attend the summit and that he would be represented by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. After his re-election in 2018, Maduro reduced his foreign tours and only traveled to Russia in 2019.

Since the United States filed charges against Maduro and 13 other high-ranking officials for drug trafficking and terrorism in March last year, and it was announced that cash would be offered in exchange for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the ruler and his close associates, including rewards of up to US$15 million, he had not made an official departure until now to Mexico.

The verbal confrontations between Maduro, Lacalle Pou, Abdo Benítez and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel caught the attention of the summit.

“When one sees that in certain countries there is no full democracy when the separation of powers is not respected when from the power the repressive apparatus is used to silence protests when opponents are imprisoned when human rights are not respected, we in a calm but the firm voice must say with concern that we seriously see what is happening in Cuba, in Nicaragua, and Venezuela,” said Lacalle Pou during his speech at the forum, which sparked the reaction of Maduro and Diaz-Canel.

“President Lacalle’s mention of Cuba denotes his ignorance of reality,” said the Cuban leader and urged his peer to “listen to your people who collected more than 700,000 signatures against the law you imposed.”

“If there is something true: in my country, luckily the opposition can collect signatures and has democratic means to complain”, Lacalle replied to Díaz-Canel and quoted some stanzas of the protest song “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life).

Referring to the summit, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter on Sunday night: “Differences aside, which are inherent to democracy, we shared a dinner of Mexican antojitos with the presidents, ministers, and diplomats of Latin America and the Caribbean.”