Vice-minister Yánez: Rupture of diplomatic relations with Venezuela will not exempt Paraguay from its debt with PDVSA - MPPRE

Vice-minister Yánez: Rupture of diplomatic relations with Venezuela will not exempt Paraguay from its debt with PDVSA

Before the declaration of the Paraguayan vice chancellor, Hugo Saguier Caballero, who reveals the rupture of diplomatic relations with Venezuela, the vice-minister for Latin America of the People’s Power Ministry for Foreign Relations, Alexander Yánez, clarified through his Twitter account @ alexanderyd2030, that this measure will not exempt them from their commitments with PDVSA. Currently Petróleos Paraguayos (Petropar) has more than US $ 300 million at 2% annual interest in debt with Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) for fuel consumption. Last year, the Arbitral Tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris, France, declared itself competent to resolve this case. The demand has its origin in the Energy Cooperation agreement signed in 2004, during the government of Nicanor Duarte Frutos, in which PDVSA promised to provide fuel to its Paraguayan counterpart, with some advantages in long-term credits of up to 15 years. Vice-minister Yánez also wrote that “he doubts that this decision is autonomous” because it seems to be subordinated to the order that the United States government gave to the Lima Group through the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Paraguay’s ruling elite will not recognize President Nicolás On December 31, 2018, the Paraguayan Foreign Minister, Luis Alberto Castiglioni, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper ABC, that the Republic of Paraguay will not recognize the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro on January 10. “We have not recognized the legitimacy of the elections in Venezuela, the countries of the Lima group are aligned to make the most effective and possible efforts for the recovery of public liberties and democracy in Venezuela”, said the Foreign Minister. Illegitimate? On May 20, 2018, President Nicolás Maduro Moros was elected President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with more than 67% of the votes, on an election day that had a broad convocation and the presence of more than 200 national and international companions, and it was also subject to 16 public audits. A month before, Mario Abdo Benítez of the Colorado Party was elected president of the Republic of Paraguay with 46.4% of the votes and a narrow difference of 3% over Efraín Alegre from the party Alianza Ganar, thus becoming the tightest election of Paraguay. The results obtained in these elections have been questioned by sectors of the opposition and population in general, due to countless complaints about irregularities in the counting of votes, minutes and the audit deficiency made by the Supreme Court of Electoral Justice (TSJE). Situation that prevented the representatives of the political opposition parties, at the time, recognize the results and therefore denounce the existence of “electoral fraud”, due to the bias and vulnerability of the Paraguayan electoral system.