Maduro panics, halts flight from Panama carrying former presidents set to observe Sunday's election

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Panama summoned the representative of the Diplomatic Mission of Venezuela this Friday to discuss recent events that prevented the takeoff of a Copa Airlines jet bound for Venezuela, according to a news report published by Reuters.

Several former presidents were traveling on the flight who intended to participate as electoral observers in the upcoming Venezuelan elections on Sunday.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said that the Maduro regime denied authorization of the flight to cross into Venezuelan airspace as long as the former presidents were on board.

"The aircraft was denied permission to take off from Tocumen as long as they remain on board," Mulino wrote on the X social media platform.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, one of the former leaders and election observers on the flight, shared a video from Panama’s Tocumen Airport said, “Nicolas Maduro has caused all Copa flights heading to Caracas and Venezuela to be suspended.”

Panama's Foreign Minister Javier Martinez-Acha said flights resumed later on Friday.

“The Venezuelan government blocked the airspace of its country to Copa Airlines for several hours,” he said, adding that the Panamanian government was “analyzing this incident very carefully.”

Other passengers on the plane besides Fox were Bolivia’s Felipe Calderón, Jeanine Áñez, and Jorge Quiroga, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Andrés Pastrana Arango, Costa Rica’s Miguel Angel Rodriguez, the Dominican Republic’s Luis Abinader, Panama’s Mireya Moscoso, and Spain’s José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy.

While remaining grounded in Panama they held a press conference, expressing concerns they were not yet in Venezuela to prepare for their election observations, but did not say whether, under the circumstances they would still travel to the South American country.

Venezuela’s aerospace agency and transportation minister said Panama’s assertions were inaccurate and published photos of Copa Airlines jets operating in Venezuelan airspace from the flight tracker website, FlightRadar24.

The delayed flight raises additional suspicions in light of other actions from Maduro’s Venezuela. Last week, the communist regime issued a decree closing all border movements by land, air and sea starting Friday at midnight.

Maduro’s totalitarian regime said the closure was part of an effort to protect the integrity of the presidential election on Sunday.

Senior U.S. officials raised additional concerns on Friday that Maduro was obstructing international monitoring and urged him to allow the ex-presidents in to Venezuela to observe Sunday’s election process. They said they were closely watching the election and would “calibrate” U.S. sanctions based on whether the election process appeared to be fair or manipulated by the regime.

Panama's foreign ministry also contacted Venezuela's diplomatic representative, asserting that the while it had no intention in severing diplomatic relations with the communist regime, it was acting “in response to an unforeseen event.”

Earlier in the week, Brazil's electoral court and former Argentine President Alberto Fernandez and both cancelled their role in acting as election observers citing concerns about voting transparency.

The presidential elections in Venezuela will be held this Sunday with the participation of 10 candidates, including the current president Nicolás Maduro and Edmundo González Urrutia who is serving as the representative of the opposition coalition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).

González Urrutia leads the polls after Maduro’s targeted disqualification of the opposition candidate María Corina Machado, who previously declared that “socialism will never return again” to Venezuela.