Daniel Ortega deploys harsh rhetoric against Lula and Petro
The embattled Nicaraguan president has lashed out without much anesthesia or diplomacy against his peers in Brazil and Colombia, accusing them of serving the U.S. strategy against Venezuela and Latin America in general. The region's left-leaning rulers are divided into three groups at the moment, and how each of them is positioning themselves in the face of the electoral crisis in the oil-producing nation serves as a measure to situate them. Ortega, together with Miguel Díaz-Canel (Cuba), Luis Arce (Bolivia), and Xiomara Castro (Honduras) would form—together with Maduro himself—the “most defined” axis, although with nuances.
Petro, Lula, and López Obrador would be in a sort of “neutral zone”, not at all strategically twinned to Miraflores, although AMLO, as expected, tends to be more respectful with the internal deliberations of each country, including Venezuela. Then there would be the cases of Chile and Guatemala. In the former, Gabriel Boric has long since been execrated by the “pure” left in the region—both political and academic. Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala, in principle a social democrat, was at some point placed in the center of the political spectrum with a certain inclination to the left—above all he is spoken of as a “progressive” politician—, but he is clearly turning in the orbit of Washington.
Daniel Ortega launched his diatribe against Lula—they have not been on good terms for some time now—and Petro in the framework of a virtual summit of heads of state and government of ALBA-TCP, an integration mechanism that emerged from the political harmony established by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. “The way Lula has behaved in the face of the victory of the legitimate president of Venezuela is a shameful, shameful way, repeating the slogans of the Yankees, of the Europeans, of the dragged governments of Latin America”, said the former guerrilla fighter.
“You are groveling (...) Lula! (...) [If] you want the [Venezuelan] people to respect you, respect the victory of President Nicolás Maduro, and don't grovel there”. Nor was he condescending to the head of the House of Nariño. “To Petro, what can I say to Petro? Poor Petro, poor Petro, I see Petro competing with Lula to see who is going to be the leader representing the Yankees in Latin America, that's how I see Petro”, he said. This ALBA-TCP summit is an emergency event convened essentially for Caracas' strongest allies to tuck Chavismo, seeking to counteract the strong international pressure motivated by the murky handling of the electoral results. Leaders of Caribbean nations such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica also participate in the forum.
Regional quick news
Five gold miners were shot dead in a southern Colombian department, allegedly by an illegal armed group, authorities said today. The victims, four Colombians and a Venezuelan, were in a rural area of the municipality of Puerto Rico, in the department of Caquetá. The bodies were found with “bullet wounds to the thorax and head”. The presence of dissidents of the extinct FARC-EP is reported in the region.
Almost a month after the elections of last July 28 in Venezuela, Juan Carlos Delpino, a key opposition figure located in the decisive National Electoral Council (CNE in Spanish), has reappeared. Delpino now denounces the “lack of transparency and veracity of the results announced” by the electoral authority, based on the refusal of the CNE to publish the disaggregated data of the voting and other already known claims, such as the barriers that would have been installed by Maduro to prevent the vote of tens of thousands of Venezuelans abroad. Delpino reappears somewhat late, while his long silence was used by the ruling force to promote the thesis that he somehow endorsed the CNE's actions.
One of Venezuela's top election officials said that he "had not received any evidence" that Nicolás Maduro, the country's authoritarian president, actually won a majority of the vote in last month's election. https://t.co/u9MMXZ9M8X
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 26, 2024
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