Venezuela Rejects US Statements on Presidential Elections

On Thursday, Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil rejected the United States' attempt to issue instructions to his country regarding the presidential elections scheduled for July 28.

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Previously, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller made statements criticizing the decision by Venezuelan authorities to revoke the invitation to European Union electoral observers.

"Electoral authorities have spoken firmly and will not tolerate any disrespect from any organization aligned with Washington. It is time for the U.S. to desist from its constant attempts to sabotage our country and our institutions," Gil said, emphasizing the impracticality of the oligarchies hoping for Venezuela to be overseen by foreign powers.

"Bolivarian democracy is solid and exemplary. We could teach the United States a lot about conducting truly free elections," he pointed out.

On Wednesday, Elvis Amoroso, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), rejected the interventionist attitude of the European Union in the ongoing electoral process, highlighting that it is an issue that concerns only Venezuelans.

"The Electoral Authority of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a free, sovereign, and independent nation, repudiates the insolent statement by the European Union, in which considerations are made that are exclusively the competence of Venezuelans, becoming a new interventionist act that seeks to interfere in the decisions of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council," he said in a statement.

"No foreign organization has the authority to decide on Venezuela's electoral observation program. The decisions made within the Electoral Council are carried out in the exercise of sovereignty, and in the particular case of revoking the invitation to the European Union, it is due to this bloc's hostile and disrespectful attitude towards Venezuela," Amoroso added.

"The European Union has behaved as a biased and aggressive actor, infringing national dignity and additionally becoming a disruptive factor in the electoral processes, maintaining the illegal and illegitimate application of coercive, unilateral, and genocidal measures, with the sole aim of causing harm to the Venezuelan population."

On July 28, Venezuelans will go to the polls to elect their next president in a process that will be accompanied by dozens of international organizations. This democratic event will take place amid the arbitrary sanctions that the United States and the European Union maintain against the Bolivarian people, which were also harshly criticized by the CNE president.

"The National Electoral Council reaffirms that as long as the European Union does not lift the entirety of the coercive, unilateral, and genocidal sanctions imposed against the people of Venezuela, which affect children, women, the elderly, the sick, students, and businessmen, their presence will not be welcome in any electoral process held in Venezuela, a nation that has decided to be free forever by the absolute will of the people," Amoroso said. 

"We demand that their hostility, neocolonial practices, siege, and interventionism in the internal affairs of Venezuela cease," he stressed.