MIAMI- The Venezuelan regime prevented this Friday representatives of the observer mission of the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA) will travel to Venezuela as international observers.
Panamanian Copa Airlines flight CM 222, which was transporting four former presidents from the region to Venezuela, was unable to take off from Tocumen Airport “due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said on his X account.
The group is made up of former presidents Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (Costa Rica), Jorge Quiroga (Bolivia), Vicente Fox (Mexico) and Mireya Moscoso (Panama), all members of the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA Group).
The flight was able to depart once the former presidents, who had initially refused to get off the plane, decided to leave and go to the presidential palace in Panama to hold a press conference.
Statements by the delegation
“We wanted to be with you (…). It hurts our souls, we want a free Venezuela (…). Go vote” and take care of your vote “so that it is not stolen from you,” said Moscoso on the plane, to the applause of several Venezuelan passengers, according to videos circulating on the social network X.
“It’s a bad sign for Sunday,” Fox said in an interview with Mexico’s Grupo Fórmula. “They took us off the plane with blackmail and pressure from Venezuela,” he said.
Mireya Moscoso said: “We were very excited, we boarded the plane full of Venezuelans who were going to vote on Sunday.”
“Suddenly, someone from Copa told us that the flight had been delayed (…) in the end they told us that there was an order that we had to leave the plane, that we former presidents could not continue to Venezuela,” lamented the former president.
The former Latin American presidents had met in Panama to travel together to Venezuela.
The delegation also included former Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez, who said: “I believe that what the Venezuelan people need today is love and solidarity (…) we have seen the Venezuelan people suffer deprivation for 24 years.”
At the press conference, along with the former presidents, was the Panamanian foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, who also rejected the blocking of the flight and said he had summoned the representative of the Venezuelan diplomatic mission in Panama to request an explanation of the incident.
Source: Editorial/With information from AFP