MADRID.-In the midst of great expectation, the Island Council of Tenerife held the talkcolloquium “Democracy in Venezuela” in which the MEP of the PP (Popular Party, Spain) Leopoldo Lopez and the former metropolitan mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezmathey talked about the political situation in the country, amidst a great reception from those attending.
The forum, which organized the Council with the support of the Foreign Action Area, it took place in the Assembly Hall of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism of the University of La Laguna, on the Guájara Campus, with free entry and with a large attendance of residents of Tenerife , who expressed support and solidarity with Venezuelans at a key political moment in the country marked by autocracy and populism, facing the presidential elections next July.
After the vice president of the Cabildo Lope Alfonso thanked the participation, the dean of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism, José Adrián García Rojas, highlighted the ties between the Canary Islands and Venezuela, and then the speakers López and Ledezma presented their visions on the Venezuelan political process.
During their presentation they agreed to point out that “in Venezuela we were victims of the curse of populism”, while at the same time they made an x-ray of the Venezuelan situation in which they highlighted the lack of democracy and populism.
Populism, enemy of democracy
López, a businessman and member of the European Parliament for Spain elected in the 2019 European elections, referred to the high migration of Venezuelans caused not by a war or a natural disaster, but by a populist regime that changed the history of the country and that is causing problems to neighboring countries.
“I believe that the great enemy of democracies in the 21st century is populism”, he said, and defined it as “the desire to stay in power for power’s sake.” He lamented the rise of autocracies, and considered that democracies are lost only if “citizens allow it,” according to press information released by the Cabildo through its X account.
Ledezma, in his speech, denounced a “cross-cutting populism that takes away the voice of the people,” and regretted that the Chavista regime in 25 years has dismantled the judicial system to the point that “the Superior Court of Justice is a troupe,” according to his words quoted in the Cabildo’s journalistic report.
He opined that “in democracy, the excesses of the opposition are preferable to the arbitrariness of the government.” “Venezuela is a country of paradoxes, given that it is “immensely rich but impoverished, with desertion of human talent, in which the salary does not exceed 15 or 20 dollars in the best of cases, with a collapse of the educational system,” he noted.
They wait for Venezuelans in Tenerife
The attended event was closed by the vice president of the Cabildo, the popular Lope Alfonso, who expressed his hope in receiving Venezuelans in Tenerife, which hosts a large number of exiles.
“I would like to have here all those who freely decided to come when they wanted and how they wanted to spend a time reunited with their family; that they could come here freely to invest or to work, or to look for opportunities, but that they did not do so driven by the way of acting, by repression; “It is what we want for our brothers,” he said.
Source: With information from networks, eldía.es, EuropaPress
