The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, affirmed this Thursday “from the political left” that “the Government of Nicolás Maduro is a dictatorship”, after being informed of the arrest of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado during a massive rally in Caracas, one day before the presidential inauguration, which both the anti-Chavista leader Edmundo González Urrutia and Maduro promise to assume. “I have been informed that in Venezuela there are very critical situations prior to what is going to be tomorrow’s inauguration (…) I have one certainty: in Venezuela today those who oppose the Government are being persecuted,” declared the Chilean head of state from the southern city of Concepción, who did not refer in more detail to the arrest of Corina Machado because he did not have all the background information. The Venezuela Command, campaign team of the opposition Edmundo González Urrutia, denounced the “kidnapping” and subsequent release of political leader María Corina Machado, after she led a demonstration in Caracas on the eve of the Venezuelan presidential inauguration. “In Venezuela today there is no freedom. And I have to say it very clearly, very explicitly, so that there is no doubt. That is why, as the Chilean Government, we have withdrawn our diplomatic representation in Venezuela,” Boric stressed, alluding to the withdrawal. definitive of his then diplomatic representative in Venezuela, Jaime Gazmuri, and the decision not to send representatives to the investiture of Maduro, whose victory in the presidential elections was granted by the Venezuelan electoral body.
