Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that he won’t attend Friday’s inauguration of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
In a statement on social media platform X, Petro said that recent arrests of opponents of the Venezuelan government impede his participation in the inauguration ceremony.
The president also stated that the July vote to reelect Maduro for another six years “weren’t free” and that Colombia’s requests for transparency in the vote count were ignored.
Without naming Washington DC, Petro added that “there are no free elections under blockades.”
We cannot recognize elections that were not free and we hope that these can be held soon without blockades and internal intimidation.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro
The US government has imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela over the past decade and claimed that the elections were won by Maduro’s conservative rival, Edmundo Gonzalez.
In his statement, Petro made it clear that his administration would try to maintain diplomatic relations with the Maduro administration and keep the border between the two neighboring countries open.
The Colombian government understands that our two peoples are linked by blood, culture and history, and that closing borders, avoiding diplomatic relations and separating our peoples by force is an enormous brutality. It leads to the borders belonging to the mafias, and causes the hunger of millions of Colombian and Venezuelan human beings and their exodus, and the systematic violation of their human rights.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro
The president also stated that his government won’t intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs “without invitation” by the government of the neighboring country.
Ahead of last year’s elections, Maduro and Venezuela’s electoral authorities explicitly invited the Colombian government to monitor the elections.
The Petro administration has since then repeatedly expressed its concern over human rights violations allegedly committed to repress anti-government protests and fraud claims that followed the elections.