European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell | Agence France-Presse
MADRID — The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government “dictatorial” during an interview broadcast Sunday in Spain, sparking renewed fury in Caracas.
Venezuela on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Caracas after Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles called Maduro’s administration a “dictatorship” and saluted “the Venezuelans who had to leave their country” because of the government.
Asked about the row during an interview with private Spanish television channel Telecinco, Borrell said more than 2,000 people had been “arbitrarily detained” since the Latin American country’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the opposition accuses Maduro of stealing.
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Political parties in Venezuela are “subjected to a thousand limitations on their activities” and the opposition’s presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, “has had to flee” to Spain, he added.
“What do you call all this? Of course, this is a dictatorial, authoritarian, dictatorial regime. But just saying so doesn’t solve anything. What we need to do is to try to solve it,” said Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister.
“Sometimes resolving things requires a certain verbal restraint, but let us not fool ourselves about the nature of things. Venezuela has called elections, but it was not a democracy before and it is much less so after.”
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Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil lashed out at Borrell on Telegram in response, calling him a “spokesman of evil” and saying he was making the European Union an “outdated, colonialist and war-mongering institution”.
Maduro, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.
The opposition published polling station-level results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
Maduro’s claim to have won sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded. About 2,400 people, including numerous teenagers, were arrested in the unrest.
France on Sunday advised its citizens to postpone any trip to Venezuela except for urgent reasons due to the surging tensions.