MADRID: The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government “dictatorial” during an interview broadcast Sunday (Sep 15) in Spain, sparking renewed fury in Caracas.
Venezuela on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Caracas after Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles called Maduro’s administration a “dictatorship” and saluted “the Venezuelans who had to leave their country” because of the government.
Asked about the row during an interview with private Spanish television channel Telecinco, Borrell said more than 2,000 people had been “arbitrarily detained” since the Latin American country’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the opposition accuses Maduro of stealing.
Political parties in Venezuela are “subjected to a thousand limitations on their activities” and the opposition’s presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, “has had to flee” to Spain, he added.
“What do you call all this? Of course, this is a dictatorial, authoritarian, dictatorial regime. But just saying so doesn’t solve anything. What we need to do is to try to solve it,” said Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister.
“Sometimes resolving things requires a certain verbal restraint, but let us not fool ourselves about the nature of things. Venezuela has called elections, but it was not a democracy before and it is much less so after.”
