Eduardo González
The president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, yesterday defended the holding of “clean, transparent and participatory elections” in Venezuela in which “absolutely all candidates” can participate.
“I am not in the position of moralizing anyone or giving lessons on democracy to anyone, but we do want to collaborate, we do want to be a source of collaboration in this process,” declared Peña during an informative breakfast organized in Madrid by New Economy Forum, on the occasion of his official trip to Spain.
“Venezuela is a democracy or wants to be a democracy, until now they have not said that they have abolished democracy as a political mechanism,” said Peña. “So, we propose that in Venezuela there be clean, transparent and participatory elections” in which Mrs. Machado can “participate,” he continued, referring to the opposition leader María Corina Machado, disqualified from running in the presidential elections. “I want to believe that Venezuela deserves the possibility of elections where absolutely all candidates participate,” he concluded.
On the other hand, Santiago Peña defended the end of the conflict in Ukraine, “because the economic costs, but mainly in human lives, are going to be irreparable,” although he admitted that “Paraguay has a very deep political and economic bond with Russia that spans many years.”
“Paraguay, in 1932, went to a new war to defend its territory together with Bolivia, and Russian officers came to Paraguay to train and even went to war, that is, that is the level of closeness that we have with the Russian Federation”, he explained. Besides, he added, “Russia, until recently, before the conflict, was one of the main markets for Paraguayan meat exports.”
Therefore, he admitted, “this conflict affects us politically and economically.” However, he warned, “Paraguay has a moral obligation, it has a moral imperative, Paraguay cannot simply put the political and economic weight on the scale and ignore that what is happening to Ukraine today is exactly the same thing that happened to us. 150 years ago”, because “it would be a level of cynicism that, at least, I do not dare to have.”
Regarding the other major global war focus, Santiago Peña regretted that the current humanitarian catastrophe suffered by the Gaza Strip due to the Israeli offensive shows that “the United Nations is not useful to resolve conflicts” and assured that he would “love” to serve as mediator to achieve a ceasefire because, on the one hand, Paraguay has always been “very close to Israel” (“Paraguay was the decisive vote in the creation of the State of Israel in that historic vote at the United Nations”) and, on the other hand, another, Paraguay is “a country that preaches peace” and that “has suffered the consequences of two tremendous wars, the War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War, both in order to defend its territory.”
Susana Sumelzo
During the presentation of the event, the State Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo, stated – coinciding with the attempts of the Spanish Government to include Catalan, Galician and Basque in the list of official languages of the European institutions – that “Paraguay is a model country in respect for its languages, where Guaraní as the original official language and Spanish coexist naturally: the first is spoken by 75% of Paraguayans and the second by 90%.”.
“Paraguay and Spain are friendly countries with numerous economic, commercial, social, political and cultural ties that we must continue to strengthen, and a good example of our excellent relations is this visit to our country that will serve to further strengthen our ties and strengthen numerous shared projects,” she added.
