Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has reopened his bilateral spat with Javier Milei – by asking the ghost of Diego Armando Maradona's to haunt the Argentine leader.
Maduro, 61, asked the spirit legendary footballer, who died in 2020 and was a friend of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, to haunt Milei, frighten him and keep him from sleeping.
“Diego, can I ask you something? Scare Milei by pulling him by his legs in his sleep,” joked Maduro during an “anti-fascist congress" in Caracas attended by delegates from 95 countries, among them Argentina.
Both presidents have traded insults in the past: Maduro has branded Milei a "fascist," a "Nazi" and a "historical mistake,” whereas the Argentine head of state – who refuses to recognise this year's disputed election – dismissed him as a “dictator” and an “impoverishing socialist."
"Here’s Diego with us, the Diego of the people, we could really use Diego right now to give Milei a piece of his mind,” Maduro said at the event in Caracas after seeing a poster with the face of the Argentine football star.
“Do you think it’s a good idea for him to pull him by his leg,” the leftist leader asked the audience.
“Let him keep him from sleeping, man, he’s doing so much harm to the people,” he said about his Argentine counterpart, whom he once again called a “Nazi."
Maduro, who the opposition accuses of committing electoral fraud in Venezuela's July 28 election, also recalled the day that Maradona gifted him with a watch valued at more than US$30,000.
“I wore it today because it bring me luck, this is the Hublot watch Diego Armando Maradona gave to me at the close of the [election] campaign on Avenida Bolívar in 2018, the watch was his, and when I wear it, Diego’s with me,” he stated.
Maradona, considered one of the finest footballers in history, died aged 60 on November 25, 2020.
– TIMES/AFP
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