The Minister of the Interior of the Government of President Gabriel Boric, Carolina Tohá, spoke this Friday about the statements of Diosdado Cabello, deputy of the National Assembly and ‘number two of Chavismo’, who said on Wednesday that the Chilean president was a ” stupid” and “lazy” when talking about Venezuela and “incapable of governing his own country.” In this regard, Tohá has stated: “I feel sorry for [tristeza] for Venezuelans”, because “when the authorities insult authorities from other countries it is because their repertoire is of tremendous poverty.” And he added: “Chile is too serious, responsible, it has been recognized all over the world. We are not going to fall into that type of language.”
Cabello, first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in his program With the gavel giving, pointed out about Boric that “this fool messes with Venezuela and is incapable of governing his own country” and that “he has imprisoned the Mapuche brothers, he has not done justice for the boys who lost eyes and complete vision in Chile (…) and he comes to talk about human rights here in Venezuela.” And he added: “He has nothing to do in his country, he has no job, because he is lazy. He respects Venezuela, he does not get involved in the internal affairs of Venezuela.”
The Chavista parliamentarian thus referred to the statements that the Chilean president made a few days ago in Germany during his tour to Europe, when in an interview with the media Deutsche Welle was consulted about the deterioration of Chile’s relations with Venezuela, whose tension has been increasing after the kidnapping and murder in Santiago, four months ago, of the dissident of the Government of Nicolás Maduro, Ronald Ojeda. “On our part there is no naivety: in Venezuela the institutions, at least within the framework of the rule of law that we have in Chile, are clearly deteriorated and we are a serious country, a responsible country, we trust in the work carried out by our Ministry Public, and we support the actions of the Chilean Justice,” said the left-wing president.
In an interview with Radio Agriculture, Minister Tohá said about Chile that “our institutions are serious” and that “our investigations are done objectively. They are not perfect, but they are serious and when they discover problems, they correct them, instead of blaming neighboring problems.” On Thursday, the Secretary of State had also referred to the statements of the Venezuelan parliamentarian. “Beyond any annoyance, we in Chile do not insult the authorities of other countries and we always respect the institution of the Presidency,” she said.
Ronald Ojeda, a political asylum seeker in Chile, was kidnapped early on February 21 from his apartment in the municipality of Independencia in Santiago, where he lived with his wife and his young son, by five individuals disguised as Chilean police officers. His body was found on March 1 buried under cement in a precarious settlement in Maipú, in the western area of Santiago. The murder has sparked several diplomatic incidents between both countries, and the Venezuelan authorities have been raising the tone against Chile after in April prosecutor Héctor Barros, who is investigating the crime, said that, due to the victim’s profile, the The only possible motive is political and that the event was planned from Venezuela. In addition, he linked as suspects Venezuelan citizens Walter Rodríguez, whose fingerprint was found on Ojeda’s mobile phone, and Maickel Villegas, who a month before the former lieutenant’s murder took his family out of Chile. For the Chilean Public Ministry, both are part of the Aragua Train and would have fled to Venezuela.
The Chilean Public Ministry has requested the background of the two suspects from the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office, which has assured that it has already sent its immigration reports, biographical and biometric data of Rodríguez and Villegas. It is intended that both be sent to Chile, however, the Venezuelan Constitution does not contemplate the extradition of its citizens to other countries. Given this scenario, Minister Carolina Tohá explained that there are other agreements, such as the Palermo agreement, that could make it possible to hand over the suspects. “This agreement would perfectly allow these people to come to Chile to face justice and then serve their sentence in Venezuela,” she said.
Diosdado Cabello’s criticisms add to the questions issued by the Attorney General of Venezuela Tarek William Saab. On June 6, dismissing Barros’ investigation, he said in a press conference that Ojeda’s murder was a “false flag operation” plotted by Chilean and foreign intelligence bodies with “spurious interests” to “cloud relations” between Chile and Venezuela, an opinion that caused the Boric Government to send a note of protest to Venezuela. Despite this, on Friday the 14th Saab returned to criticize him and classified as “hysterical and distorted” and with “foul language” the statements made by the Chilean authorities regarding the case.
Ý, last Sunday, in an interview that Saab gave to the Chilean channel Mega, also charged against the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office and said that its investigation into the murder of Ronald Ojeda is “extreme poverty” and “very weak.” He also assured that two of the suspects in the murder, Rodríguez and Villegas, “are not in Venezuela” and reiterated his thesis that it was “a false flag action” that, according to him, was “executed from Chile, with participation, obviously, of a large structure that carries out the kidnapping and murder, with some component of Chilean police forces and foreign bodies.” “I am convinced that everything that has happened during these months has to do with Venezuela experiencing an electoral year” and that for this reason, according to him, “the subterfuge to attack our country is always to use false positives, false operations flag to try to discredit, through lies, defamation, the Venezuelan State,” he added.
The rejection of the Frente Amplio and the PC
This Friday afternoon, the Frente Amplio, the left-wing political coalition to which Boric belongs, issued a public statement in which it rejected Cabello’s statements and classified his statements as “vexatious and insulting.”
“From the Frente Amplio we express our categorical rejection of the vexatious and insulting statements issued by the Venezuelan deputy Diosdado Cabello against the President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, and consequently, against all the people of Chile,” the statement says.
Figures from the Communist Party (PC), part of the ruling party, have also joined in criticizing the Chavista deputy. The mayor of Santiago, Irací Hassler, said that she finds “the words of that person, the number two in Venezuela, very serious. I think they are offensive, they represent an interventionist look at elements where they have no role to play. “They should rather worry about their own country.”
Also, communist deputy Luis Cuello told the Chilean newspaper La Segunda that he considers “the insults uttered by a foreign authority against the president to be unacceptable. The way countries relate must always be respectful and these expressions contribute nothing.” Deputy PC Alejandra Placencia agreed: “They are absolutely inappropriate statements and speak poorly of the person who utters them. “They do not contribute anything to the collaborative spirit that is needed between both states.”
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