Panama summons Venezuelan representative after plane with former presidents cannot take off

Panama’s Foreign Ministry summoned the “representative of the Venezuelan Diplomatic Mission” on Friday after a plane carrying several former presidents who were going to Venezuela to participate as electoral observers in next Sunday’s elections was unable to take off.

“The Foreign Ministry has summoned the representative of the Diplomatic Mission of Venezuela in Panama to the Bolívar Palace (the headquarters of the ministry),” said the Panamanian foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, on his X account, citing the Panamanian president’s publication where he reported that the plane had been prevented from leaving.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino reported that a Copa Airlines plane carrying former Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso and other former presidents bound for Venezuela was not “allowed to take off from Tocumen while they remain on board, due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace. Likewise, another Copa flight to Panama from Caracas has not been allowed to take off.”

These former presidents are part of the Freedom and Democracy Group, which is made up, in addition to Moscoso, of the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, and the former presidents of the Spanish Government José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, as well as the former presidents Mario Abdo Benítez, from Paraguay; Jeanine Áñez and Jorge Quiroga, from Bolivia; Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox, from Mexico, and Iván Duque and Andrés Pastrana, from Colombia.

Former presidents Osvaldo Hurtado, Jamil Mahuad and Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador; Rafael Calderón and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica; and Mauricio Macri of Argentina; as well as Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and former governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño, are also part of this initiative.

Caracas’ decision to prevent some of them from leaving Panama comes after the Freedom and Democracy Group said in a statement on Wednesday that any attempt at fraud in Venezuela’s presidential elections must be sanctioned by the international community.

Ten candidates will participate in Sunday’s elections, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia, standard-bearer of the opposition coalition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) and who leads the voting intention to replace the disqualified María Corina Machado, according to traditional pollsters.

Panama City / EFE