Opponent Juan Guaidó, recognized as president in charge of Venezuela by fifty countries, traveled to Colombia to meet with the head of US diplomacy, Mike Pompeo, a deputy reported on Sunday.
Guaidó will meet with Pompeo in Bogotá, where the US Secretary of State will start a tour of Latin America and the Caribbean on Monday, legislator Stalin González confirmed to the AFP.
The parliamentarian did not immediately specify when or by what means Guaidó left, on whom a prohibition of leaving the country weighs as part of multiple criminal and administrative investigations of Venezuelan authorities, loyal to the socialist president Nicolás Maduro.
https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1218910231402549248
Local media said that the president of Parliament, with an opposition majority, clandestinely crossed the border with Colombia, which has been closed since 2015.
Pompeo said he will take advantage of a tour of the Caribbean to thank the president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, for the "constant condemnation (...) of the abuses of Maduro", and for welcoming those fleeing the "regime" of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, whom he considers another member of the "troika of tyranny" along with Venezuela and Cuba.
Guaidó had already challenged the ban on leaving the country in February 2019, after his failed attempt to enter United States donations, a strategy with which he sought to break the military's support for Maduro.
On that occasion, the opponent visited several countries in the region and returned to Venezuela, from Colombia, through the Maiquetía airport that serves Caracas, amid the expectation of a possible arrest.
Parliamentary battle in Venezuela
On January 5, the annual election of the Board of Directors of the Assembly should take place, which Guaidó would presumably continue to occupy - for having deputies of majority opposition - but state security forces (under the control of Nicolás Maduro) prevented the entry of the parliamentarians opposing the building.
Hours later the opponents held an alternative session at the headquarters of the newspaper El Nacional, where they elected Guaidó as president of Parliament with 100 votes. The National Assembly has 167 parliamentarians, elected in December 2015 and with a mandate until 2020.
Guaidó denounced a “coup against the State under the impregnated gaze of the dictatorship,” and even countries closer to Maduro, such as Mexico and Argentina, expressed concern.
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