Panama's President Calls Venezuela a Historic Milestone in the Fight Against Dictatorship

Panama's President José Raúl Mulino said this Tuesday from Oslo that Venezuela will be 'a great historical milestone' of how a people can liberate themselves from 'a tyrannical dictator,' on the eve of the presentation of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to that country's opposition leader, María Corina Machado. 'I hope that all this resonance, which is already having and will continue to have in the next two days, will have an impact internally and they will understand that there is no turning back, there is only one route and that is freedom and democracy for Venezuela,' he explained. 'Venezuela will be a great historical milestone of how a people with resistance, but with tenacity and struggle, frees itself from a tyrannical dictator (referring to Nicolás Maduro),' the Panamanian head of state told the press from the Norwegian capital. Mulino also stated that the awarding of that Nobel to Machado is 'a huge symbolism that the stars are aligning in favor of Venezuela's freedom' at the same time as he hopes that 'all this resonance' will manage to have an impact 'internally' so that it is understood that 'there is only one route and that is freedom' for Venezuela. Mulino is in Oslo to attend the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for the Venezuelan opposition leader this Wednesday, where Edmundo González Urrutia, exiled in Spain and who faced Nicolás Maduro in the July 2024 elections, will also be present. The Panamanian government has given its support to Machado and Gómez Urrutia after the 2024 elections, which the opposition claims to have won, while the official electoral body gave the victory to Maduro. The Nobel Institute had informed EFE on Saturday that Machado herself had assured them the day before in a telephone conversation that she would travel to the Norwegian capital, but her whereabouts are still unknown. It is also a mystery how and when she could have left Venezuela, amid the air connectivity crisis that Caracas is experiencing, without international connections due to the cancellations of several airlines that withdrew their flights due to warnings from U.S. authorities about the danger of flying over the region, due to Washington's military deployment in the Caribbean. Machado 'is trying to get to Oslo' to receive that Nobel Peace Prize, affirmed her sister Clara Machado Parisca this Tuesday in an interview with the Colombian station Blu Radio, after postponing a press conference scheduled at the Oslo Nobel Institute. Thus, the records that would give the victory to Gómez Urrutia are kept in the Central American country. If she arrives in Oslo, it would be her first time in public since January 2025.