MEP and presidential candidate João Cotrim de Figueiredo warned this Monday, December 1st, in Porto, of the need to protect the situation of more than 500 thousand Portuguese and Portuguese descendants in Venezuela after the air blockade ordered by the United States.
Speaking on the sidelines of the visit to the Cordoaria Christmas Market, Cotrim de Figueiredo added, however, that the current President of the Republic and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “have made the necessary preparations so that this community is minimally safeguarded, given that that number of people cannot be evacuated, therefore, it must be taken into account in another way”.
Regarding the country led by Nicolás Maduro, the candidate stated that it is “a dictatorial regime, which nowadays is not really of any political color” and that it is “clearly transforming into a narco-state” and that, therefore, “it is not just a security or criminality issue. It is also a political problem with the dimension it has already reached”.
“It doesn’t shock me, for example, that certain narco-states are considered accomplices in terrorism or even terrorists. It doesn’t shock me because this can be a reality and has happened, given, once again, the financial dimension of the issue. Now, this does not justify subversions of international law”, he stressed.
Regarding the revocation of TAP’s license to fly in the airspace of that South American country, the candidate considered it “an abuse, yet another, by Nicolás Maduro (…) and which has led to increasingly vocal internal opposition, including from some who initially supported his dictatorship such as the Venezuelan Communist Party, which has even criticized the Portuguese Communist Party for not understanding what is going on in Venezuela”.
“Therefore, once again, our Portuguese Communist Party is very slow to feel the winds of History and not put itself on the right side of history”, he criticized.