Two of Nicolás Maduro's oldest allies raised eyebrows on the sidelines of the annual gathering of the United Nations, staging a pro-democracy event in which neither mentioned the Venezuelan leader.
Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez conceived the event to highlight perceived threats from the far-right. But the wave of repression Maduro has unleashed since declaring himself the victor of a disputed July election shifted attention to their policies toward the beleaguered South American nation, even generating criticism from another leftist in attendance.
While Lula and Sánchez avoided the deepening Venezuelan crisis, Chile President Gabriel Boric urged world leaders to put democratic principles over politics during an address that listed Maduro alongside others like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.
“Human rights violations can’t be judged according to the colour of the dictator or the president who commits them — either Netanyahu in Israel, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua or Vladimir Putin in Russia,” Boric said. “We need to be able to defend principles and I believe we sometimes fail to do that.”
Neither Lula, who has long maintained close ties to Venezuela, nor the leftist Sánchez have recognised Maduro’s declaration of victory.
But they have also avoided endorsing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s claims that he won the race, fostering backlash at home and abroad from critics who say their alarmism about democracy should apply as equally to Venezuela’s socialist regime as it does to the far-right movements making gains from Europe to the Americas.
Sánchez, in particular, has found himself under intensifying scrutiny since his government struck a deal with Venezuela that allowed González Urrutia to flee to Spain earlier this month.
While the agreement granted González Urrutia asylum, it also removed the biggest hurdle facing Maduro’s quest to remain in power and cast a spotlight on the Spanish left’s links to the regime: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the former prime minister and Sánchez partymate who led the talks with Caracas, has long expressed sympathy for the Venezuelan government.
Sánchez's government is now facing fierce blowback over the release of photos showing that Spain allowed Maduro acolytes Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Rodríguez into its ambassador’s residence to negotiate González Urrutia’s exit, especially after González Urrutia said he was forced to sign a document accepting a court ruling that recognised Maduro’s victory.
The episode has raised questions about the underlying intent of Spain’s strategy, and led an opposition leader in parliament to call for the resignation of Sánchez's foreign affairs minister.
Zapatero was heckled by a group of Venezuelan protesters who yelled “accomplice” at him as he entered a separate event in Madrid on Tuesday evening, his first public appearance since González Urrutia left Venezuela. He told reporters before the event that he would not comment on the political situation in Venezuela because mediators should be discreet and avoid speaking.
Sánchez's is also under increasing pressure to recognise González Urrutia as the victor after a slim parliamentary majority voted to do so, although the government has said any such decision would be made according to the European Union’s position.
Lula has similarly advocated for a diplomatic resolution after years of arguing that the sanctions-heavy campaign waged by the United States disproportionately hurt ordinary Venezuelans while failing to loosen Maduro’s grip on power.
But he has struggled to overcome the perception that his long friendship with Maduro, whom he cast last year as a victim of a global “narrative,” is clouding Brazil’s approach. And while the Venezuelan opposition initially backed his diplomatic posture, it has so far proved incapable of pressuring Maduro into a change of course.
The Venezuelan leader has ignored demands from Lula and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, a fellow leftist, to release full ballot records, and their warnings against repression have failed to dissuade the regime from threatening to detain opposition leaders or arresting nearly 2,000 alleged dissidents.
Both Maduro and the opposition, meanwhile, rejected Lula’s proposal for new elections as a potential solution in August.
Neither Lula nor Sánchez's offices responded to requests for comment.
Fake news and Trump
The pair of leftists are nevertheless betting that Venezuela will take a back seat to mounting global concerns about a potential Donald Trump victory in November’s US election, an outcome that would provide a massive boost to far-right movements that have made significant gains across the world in recent years.
The event was designed to forge consensus around how to counter that momentum, with an agenda focused on blunting the power of fake news, protecting democratic institutions and ensuring free and fair elections, said Ambassador Carlos Cozendey, secretary of multilateral affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry.
Along with Boric, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of three other nations attended the event. The United States, Mexico and Colombia sent government officials to the forum, as did Norway, Kenya and Senegal. Representatives from the European Council and United Nations also took part.
The United States and Argentina will convene a separate event on Venezuela on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Thursday, and are expecting to bring some 30 countries together to discuss the crisis, according to a senior US State Department official who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
The official said countries like Brazil and Colombia have played a positive role in engaging Maduro, but added that they must continue pushing for transparency and dialogue going forward.
The spread of online misinformation has been a particular focus for Brazil, where the Supreme Court ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X platform in August, after it refused to appoint a legal representative and take down accounts accused of disseminating hate speech.
The court has painted its efforts as a crusade against anti-democratic acts, but the ban on the social media site has generated allegations from Musk and others that the judges and their supporters on the left are the ones eroding free speech protections and undermining democracy.
Lula made a veiled reference to the battle during his opening address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday morning, saying that Brazil and other countries cannot be “intimidated by individuals, corporations or digital platforms that believe they are above the law.”
by Simone Iglesias, Bloomberg
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