Eduardo González
The participation of Maduro’s Venezuelan regime Venezuela became yesterday, inevitably, the unwanted protagonist of an Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government that had been designed to address the fight against COVID-19 and the recovery after the economic crisis generated by the pandemic.
Among the leaders who spoke yesterday at the Andorra Summit (the vast majority by videoconference), the one who was most belligerent against the Maduro regime was the President of Colombia, Iván Duque, who recalled that the region is currently experiencing its “greatest migratory crisis” due to the “millions of Venezuelans” who have fled “the most oppressive dictatorship ever seen” in Latin America. For this reason, the Colombian president urged that the situation in Venezuela be addressed “urgently” in order to achieve “the end of the dictatorship, free elections and a transition period”.
Also in a very harsh tone, the President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, described as unacceptable that “the delegate of a government that does not respect political principles or the human rights of the people it claims to represent” should join this summit, while the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, urged the Government of Venezuela to “assume a full and total commitment to the values of freedom, the rule of law, democracy and human rights”. The President of Peru, Francisco Rafael Sagasti, showed his “support for the common values of democracy and human rights for our Venezuelan brothers” so that they can “overcome the crisis that has led millions of Venezuelans into exile”, and the President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle, asked the Venezuelan regime, “with a calm but firm voice”, to “open the doors and the window to democracy”.
For his part, Brazil‘s secretary for bilateral negotiations in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, Kenneth da Nóbrega (President Jair Bolsonaro refused to participate in the Summit precisely in protest against the presence of the Venezuelan government), wanted to “make it clear that Brazil’s participation in this summit does not imply recognition of the illegitimate regime of Nicolás Maduro”. Paraguay‘s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Antonio Dos Santos, pronounced exactly the same words in his subsequent intervention.
In a predictably different tone, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called for “respect” for President Maduro and stated that “it is unfair to blame the Venezuelan government for the economic and social situation” the country is experiencing, which has been caused by “the unilateral coercive measures of the United States, supported by some of its allies”. “It would be useful and sincere to recognize that the U.S. intervention has failed. They should recognize that Venezuela is a sovereign state”, he added.
As expected, the harshest tone was set by Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who finally replaced Maduro at the Summit despite the fact that the latter’s participation had been announced. In her response to the “minor voices of intolerance in our sub-region”, the vice-president charged almost all her artillery against Iván Duque, whom she accused of being responsible for the “failure to guarantee peace for the people of Colombia, entangled in drug crops”. Likewise, she declared that “those who speak of democracy must respect the sacred will of the people of Venezuela”, who “have elected their authorities”, and demanded the EU to return the “resources kidnapped from the people of Venezuela”, in reference to the European sanctions. Delcy Rodriguez is on the EU sanctions list against Venezuela for Human Rights violations and is banned from entering the Schengen area.
Regarding this debate on Venezuela, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, declared during the press conference that the Summit “is the only multilateral space of the Ibero-American community to meet, dialogue, listen to each other and confront ideas, and that is what we have seen”. “There are absolutely confrontational political positions, but from that dialogue, and through an environment such as the Ibero-American Summit, agreements are reached”, he concluded, without further details.
Pedro Sánchez announces the donation of vaccines
The other speakers, including Sánchez, avoided the subject of Venezuela and focused on the major themes of the Summit, whose motto was Ibero-America facing the challenge of the coronavirus and which concluded with the approval of a Common Declaration advocating universal access to vaccines against COVID-19 and proposing an urgent reform of the financing instruments so that the countries most affected by the pandemic receive faster and more flexible aid. During the interventions, all the participants, regardless of their political color, coincided in their strong criticism of the unequal distribution of vaccines, the “nationalism of vaccines”, the inadequacies of the COVAX system, the “hoarding” in some countries that have received “more vaccines than they needed” and the patent system, which impedes the production of vaccines in Latin American laboratories.
In this sense, Pedro Sánchez took advantage of his speech to announce, in line with what he himself had advanced the day before, that his Government is going to make “available to Latin America between five and ten percent of the total COVID vaccines that Spain is going to receive in 2021”, which implies “7.5 million doses at the end of this year” that will be distributed through COVAX and the Pan American Health Organization depending on “the preparation of the recipient countries to receive and be able to use the doses received”. The announcement was welcomed by some of the leaders who spoke after Sánchez.
With regard to economic recovery, the various speakers also agreed on the need to modify the international financial system and mentioned (especially Sánchez and the Argentinean president, Alberto Fernández, as is obvious) the special joint communiqué presented by Spain and Argentina, and accepted by consensus by all the leaders, which calls for all countries, regardless of their income level and including middle-income countries, to have access to financing under favorable conditions within the framework of the new scheme being devised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and which supports the issuance of special drawing rights to help countries to overcome the crisis.
In addition to Sánchez, Spain was represented by King Philip VI, who said that “when Spain was going through the most difficult moments of the pandemic, we always kept our Ibero-American brothers and sisters very much in mind and initiatives were launched based on the strongest sense of solidarity and cooperation”. Likewise, he affirmed that the “important anniversaries” to be celebrated in 2021, “especially the bicentennial of the Independence of the countries of Central America, Mexico and Peru”, are “an appropriate occasion to renew Spain’s support to the search for consensus and solutions, and to the regional integration of the Americas”. “We will always be at the side of our brother countries of America, in whatever is required of us, to support their efforts to improve the life, welfare and health of their populations”, he added.
