Uruguay’s Foreign Minister has said that the recently inaugurated government will recognize neither Nicolás Maduro nor Edmundo González Urrutia – an opposition politician who is widely believed to have won the country’s July 2024 elections – as the president of Venezuela.
Mario Lubetkin, Uruguay’s Foreign Minister under the governing left-wing Broad Front (Frente Amplio) party, told Spanish newspaper El Mundo: “We don’t recognize anyone [as Venezuela’s president] at the moment: neither Maduro nor the president who claimed to have won according to the minutes he posted on the internet.”
Asked if this meant that he believed that Venezuela thus has no current president, Lubetkin responded: “I would not say that, because there is a reality that controls the country. It is not like the situation in Somalia where there is total chaos.” He added, “There is precise control over the management of the State, of the economy.”
However, Lubetkin clarified, “That does not mean recognition,” emphasizing again that the left-wing government led by Yamandú Orsi refuses to accept either politician as Venezuela’s president.
When asked if he considered Maduro to be a dictator, Lubetkin claimed that Orsi has “effectively raised the concept of dictatorship” in the past, seemingly an allusion to comments Orsi made in October. Lubetkin added, “We cannot recognize a democratic reality when the electoral process did not meet the standards of guarantees that a democratic state can give us.”
In response to the comments made by Lubetkin, the outgoing right-wing National Party published a statement rejecting the Broad Front’s refusal to recognize González as the president of Venezuela.
The statement declares: “The National Party, a firm defender of democracy and respect for the laws that oppose the dictatorship ruling in Maduro’s Venezuela, condemns the new course taken by the government in withdrawing recognition of President González Urrutia.”
It continues: “The defense of the people’s will, expressed through voting, is an inalienable right of citizens in a democracy. It is part of the very foundation of the National Party, which is committed to protecting freedoms in general and civil liberties in particular.”
The National Party also called on the new government to “reconsider their stance” on the situation and to “recognize the result of the popular vote in the recent elections.”
In February, then-President Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party blocked Orsi’s attempts to invite the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba to his inauguration ceremony, which took place on Saturday, March 1.
As president, Lacalle Pou had recognized González Urrutia as the legitimate president-elect of Venezuela. The two met in January, when González Urrutia visited Montevideo as part of a wider tour of Latin America, which took him to Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, and other countries.
Featured image credit:
Image: Mario Lubetkin
Photographer: Diego Paredes for FAOAmericas via Flickr
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/faoalc/53645307129
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
