President Gustavo Petro said Friday that his government’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela seeks to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe” that would impact Colombia.
Petro responded to criticism on his government’s decision not to reject the results of Venezuela’s election that granted President Nicolas Maduro, another six years in office on Sunday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez “won the most votes” and would thus have to succeed Maduro in January.
But according to Petro, “it’s not a foreign government that should decide who the president of Venezuela is ” despite evidence of fraud.
In a joint statement that was made with the governments of Brazil and Mexico, Colombia’s government said that the main concerns in Bogota are “maintaining social peace and protect human lives.”
The Colombian president said that he had also talked with Chilean President Gabriel Boric to form a bloc of leftist democracies in Latin America.
The members of this bloc have consistently called on Venezuela’s election authority to publish the tally sheets that would either prove or disprove the fraud allegations made by the opposition.
Latin America’s leftist governments have yet to recognize the results.
Petro said that “from my position and governor I must respect Venezuela’s self-determination,” suggesting that his government would eventually accept Maduro’s disputed claim to power.
“I am looking for diplomatic and political ways, through dialogue, to stop a humanitarian disaster” in Venezuela, said the president.
Security forces in the neighboring country cracked down hard on anti-government protests that followed the election, claiming they were part of a CIA-backed coup.
In Colombia, which is home to 2.8 million Venezuelans, the fear is that the political crisis could turn violent and lead to a new wave of migration.
“A humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela becomes a humanitarian catastrophe in Colombia,” said Petro.
In an editorial, liberal newspaper El Espectador welcomed the government’s response, but warned that “prudence may not become complicity with tyranny.”
In the chess game that the president is playing with Venezuela, he must make one thing clear: Colombia will not endorse the face of an evident fraud and an authoritarian and violent government.
El Espectador
Conservative and far-right voices have accused Petro of being complicit in the fraudulent reelection of Maduro’s “dictatorship” ever since the vote.
