Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro will be out of power soon, says Colombia leader and US ally Ivan Duque
- President Nicolas Maduro has said the opposition efforts against him amount to an illegal coup
- He has accused Ivan Duque and US President Donald Trump of working out ‘war plans’ against him
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s “days in power are about to end” because of growing international and domestic pressure on his “mafioso” government and increasing desertions by his military troops, Colombian President Ivan Duque said.
“Maduro is facing his last days, whether that is one month or two, or one week, or one day,” Duque said in an interview at a military base in Bogota on Sunday.
Duque’s country has directly felt the impact of Maduro’s years of corrupt government, which have turned one of Latin America’s richest countries into an economic and humanitarian catastrophe.
Colombia, itself still recovering from decades of guerilla violence, has accepted more than 1.2 million Venezuelan refugees across the shared border amid a deepening disaster that has left much of the Venezuelan population starved for food, water, medicine and power.
Duque said he felt a moral urgency to help lead the opposition to Maduro. He likened the situation to that of people who can hear their next-door neighbour beating his wife and children every night. “You have to do something so that abuse does not continue,” he said.
