Chile protested to Venezuela for not allowing entry of two invited senators

The Chilean Government sent this Friday, July 26, 2024, a note of protest to Venezuela for having Senators Felipe Kast (centre-right) and José Manuel Rojo Edwards (far-right) were prevented from entering the country, invited by the Venezuelan opposition as observers in next Sunday’s elections in which Nicolás Maduro is seeking re-election.

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“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Venezuelan ambassador to Chile, Arévalo Méndez, to deliver a note of protest because Senators José Manuel Rojo Edwards and Felipe Kast were not allowed to enter that country,” the Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement.

Kast, from the Evópoli party, reported on his social networks that they were going to be deported because did not meet “the profile or the conditions to enter the country.”

“It’s completely arbitrary. “This shows that all the words of some who say that it is a democracy are simply a big lie,” Kast said in a video on X.

Edwards, from the far-right Christian Social Party, said for his part that “Maduro has brought misery and hunger” and “he must know that all of Latin America will defend democracy” of the brave people of Venezuela.”

The Presidency of the Chilean Senate assured that The facts are “undemocratic” and “denote the greatest seriousness” because “the Chilean senators have all the conditions usually required by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to enter its territory.”

Maduro, in power since 2013, will face Edmundo González Urrutia on Sunday, a 74-year-old former diplomat who became the opposition candidate after the former deputy Maria Corina Machado was disqualified, and who leads the voting intention, according to the traditional pollsters of the South American country.

Chavismo, however, assures that Maduro will win, despite independent polls reflecting the weariness of much of the population amid a fierce economic crisis that has devastated the country over the past decade.

The deportation of the Chilean senators takes place hours after Venezuela has prevented the entry of a delegation of parliamentarians from the Popular Party (PP) of Spain and also a group of former Latin American presidents on a plane that could not take off from Panama until the former presidents got off the aircraft.

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