The Foreign Ministry stated that the maneuver was “orchestrated by a group of governments and foreign powers.” It declared that the group, a version of the infamous, deceased, and defeated Lima Group, intends to distort what “has been expressed in peace and with civic spirit in our country, which is nothing other than the exercise of the people’s right to choose.”

The ministry pointed out that among the promoters are government officials from Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic, along with a group of far-right politicians specialized in destabilizing governments in Latin America. Among them, it mentioned the former presidents lván Duque, Mauricio Macri, Andrés Pastrana, and Oscar Arias, as well as the US politicians Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.

The statement noted that voting is exercised in Venezuela “with absolute freedom and legality of our laws and the control of one of the five Public Powers of the State, the National Electoral Council.” It is carried out “through a transparent, secure and inviolable system, recognized as one of the best in the world, which fully guarantees the principle of one elector, one vote.”

The note denounced that the people who recognized a puppet in 2019 intend to impose it in 2024. “This miserable and desperate operation is targeted to fail because Venezuela is a free and sovereign country and will never accept impositions or blackmail, especially from foreign bodies without morals or legality, to attack our rights and our people,” the statement pointed out.

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