MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Caracas withdraws invitation to Alberto Fernández as electoral observer

Fernández's words that whoever wins the elections in Venezuela should become the next president were not what Maduro's regime wanted to hear

Former Argentine President Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) announced Wednesday that he would not travel to Venezuela as a foreign observer to the South American country's July 28 elections after the Government of President Nicolás Maduro had second thoughts.

Fernández published on social media a copy of the letter inviting him but explained he would need to decline citing more recent contacts from an eerily concerned Caracas after he said in a radio interview that Maduro would have to leave the presidency if defeated.

“Yesterday, the Venezuelan national government conveyed to me its will that I should not travel and desist from fulfilling the task that had been entrusted to me by the National Electoral Council,” Fernández wrote on X.

“An electoral observer must watch over the compliance of the established rules during the whole electoral act, in an objective, impartial, and transparent manner,” Fernández stressed while noting that his remarks caused some “discomfort and generated doubts” in Caracas about his “impartiality” and that his coincidence with the statements made by the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “generated a kind of destabilization of the electoral process.”

“I do not understand such discomfort,” Fernández argued as if the dictatorial nature of Maduro's regime was foreign and new to him. “I only said that in a democracy, when people cast their vote, the one who wins, wins and the one who loses, loses, and if the ruling party were to be defeated it should accept the popular verdict.”

Hence, he decided not to participate in the event because -he claimed- he did not want to “cloud a transcendental electoral day” although he was “only trying to fulfill the task of an electoral observer.”

“I would have liked to be able to do so, but I feel that in the context created, I will not be able to fully comply with that task,” the law professor argued. “I make this situation public with much regret, but with the sole purpose of expressing my best wishes for Venezuela to have the best future it deserves,” he underlined.

“What Venezuela needs is to recover its democratic coexistence and that those who are wandering around the world because they left the country for whatever reason can return,” Fernández also told the Buenos Aires broadcasters.

In Caracas, National Electoral Council (CNE) Chairman Elvis Amoroso said there was an alleged “media campaign paid with drug money” heralding the end of Maduro's tenure which has so far spanned for over a decade since the passing away of Hugo Chávez Frías.