Spanish
Madrid.- Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado assured this Wednesday that Venezuela is prepared to "take the step" to be "free" and that other countries like Cuba and Nicaragua will follow.
Machado intervened via videoconference in a forum in Madrid attended by the also Venezuelan opposition figure Edmundo González Urrutia, exiled in Spain, and several conservative and liberal former presidents from Latin America and Spain.
In his opinion, to change the course of a country like Venezuela, among other things, a "vibrant" civil society and a leadership like the one that, in his opinion, politicians like González Urrutia represent are necessary.
Therefore, his country is ready to take the step that removes Nicolás Maduro from power and for his experience to serve others, he continued.
"Venezuela will be free," he emphasized, and it will be "the first time in history that an entire continent will be freed from communism and dictatorships."
Machado thanked the support of the attendees to this international seminar, in which González Urrutia was received with applause and repeatedly named as "president elect" of Venezuela.
Following the elections last July, the country's electoral body proclaimed Maduro as the winner for a new presidential term, despite the opposition and a large part of the international community denouncing electoral fraud.
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"Venezuela has not been isolated, if it weren't for the trust that you have had in the people of Venezuela, (...) in our capacity to resist, to advance, to organize ourselves," he asserted.
Russia, Iran, and China support Maduro, he continued, but it was recently possible for Venezuelan opposition members who were taking refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas to leave for the United States, he cited as an example of that capacity.
The Forum of the Freedom and Democracy Group held at the Ateneo de Madrid was organized by the Freedom and Development Foundation, the International Foundation for Freedom, Atlas Network, and Adam Smith Center.
