President Lula said this Thursday (5) that the priority in Venezuela is not the return of Nicolás Maduro, but the strengthening of democracy. Maduro was taken to stand trial outside the country after a US military operation.
“That [a volta de Maduro] is not the main concern. The main concern is the following: is it possible for us to strengthen democracy in Venezuela and 8 million people who are out there come back to the country? Are there conditions for democracy to be effectively respected?”, declared the president in an interview with columnist Daniela Lima, from UOL.
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The president stated that he still does not know whether the interim dictator will call elections, but argued that it must be Venezuelans’ responsibility to take care of the electoral process, mentioning that he had discussed the matter with President Donald Trump.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said this Thursday that there could be democratic elections in Venezuela in less than a year, although she has not yet discussed the matter with US President Donald Trump.
“We believe that a real transition process with manual voting… the entire process could be completed in nine or ten months. But, well, that depends on when it starts”, declared Machado, recognized with the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and who is currently in the USA.
The PT member also reinforced in the interview with Uol that South America cannot be the scene of another armed conflict, as seen in other regions of the planet. “What we are telling Trump is that South America is a zone of peace. We don’t have an atomic bomb, we don’t have nuclear weapons. What we want is to grow economically, strengthen the democratic process and improve the lives of millions of Latin Americans. Latin America cannot continue to be a poor part of the world,” he said.
