Julio Borges

Julio Andrés Borges Junyent (Caracas, October 22, 1969) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer. He was elected deputy to the National Assembly of Venezuela for Miranda during the periods 2000-2005, 2010 -2015 and 2016-2021 and 8th president of the National Assembly of Venezuela for the period 2017-2018. He is the founder of the Primero Justicia party. He was host of the television program Justicia Para Todos. He represented Venezuela before the Lima Group between January 2019, presidential commissioner for Foreign Relations appointed by opposition leader Juan Guaidó in August 2019. He resigned from these positions on December 5, 2021.

Early years

Education

He is a lawyer who graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University (1992) where he also completed a postgraduate degree in Theology. He completed a Master's Degree in Political and Social Philosophy at Boston College in the United States (1994) and a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Latin American Studies at the University of Oxford (1996). He was an honorary professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Philosophy at the Santo Tomás University.

Justice For All

At the end of the 90s, the program Justicia Para Todos was broadcast on the RCTV channel. This program lasted more than a year, being broadcast every afternoon and having good ratings due to being an innovation for Venezuelan television, since other similar programs were barely seen in other Latin American countries.

Family

Son of Rosa Junyent and Julio Borges Iturriza, Spanish immigrants who fled the War and Francoism. Married to Daniella Matheus, and father of quadruplets: Juan Pablo, Juan Diego, Andrés Ignacio and Ana Sofía, called the Divine Shepherdess, in honor of said religious figure, after an in vitro fertilization process that resulted in the birth of the children. themselves.

Political career

In 1992 he founded the Primero Justicia Civil Association at the Andrés Bello Catholic University, whose purpose was to promote a model of community justice called: Justice of Peace. For the 1999 National Constituent Assembly elections, Borges along with Leopoldo López were the Primero Justicia candidates, without being elected. Once elected, she promoted a Constitution Proposal and created the “Social Alliance for Justice”, a group of non-governmental organizations that drafted 65% of the chapters on Human Rights and the justice system of the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela. thus creating the Nominations Committee, whose purpose was to make justice non-partisan and include sectors outside of partisan politics in the nomination of judges.

Founder of Primero Justicia

In the year 2000, in the context of the mega-elections, Primero Justicia became a political party, there he was elected Deputy of the National Assembly for the state of Miranda. In the midst of the political crisis that led to the 2002 coup d'état, together with his party, he requested the resignation of all representatives of the National Public Power as a way out of the crisis. He was a promoter of the collection of signatures together with his organization to call the recall referendum against Chávez in 2004. In the 2005 parliamentary elections he expressed his disagreement with the withdrawal of the Venezuelan opposition, but the majority of his party at that time decided to abstain.

Nomination for the presidency

On May 27, 2005, Borges announced his presidential candidacy for the elections at the end of 2006. He began an international tour visiting several center-right politicians, including Vicente Fox, president of Mexico, and the pre-candidates of the PAN (Action Party). National) for the 2006 elections. He promoted primary elections between the candidates to unify the opposition around a single candidacy. The primary elections were about to be held on August 13, 2006 and were suspended due to the national unity agreement on August 9, 2006, where he declined his presidential candidacy around a single candidacy before the presentation of Hugo Chávez for re-election, supporting to the governor of Zulia; Manuel Rosales.

Deputy of the National Assembly

He has been elected deputy to the National Assembly for three periods: 2000-2005, 2010-2015, and 2016-2021, representing the list vote of the Miranda State. He served as head of the bench of the Mesa de la Democratic Unity of January 2016-2017.

His proposals were focused on the Economy, mainly on property, production and employment. During his performance as a deputy, he was a member of the Education Commission in 2001, of the Special Commission that studied the Education Project. Law for the Promotion of Employment and member of the Comprehensive Social Development Commission the following year, he also chaired the Joint Commission to prepare the Report that would present the Bill of Law on Coexistence and Conflict Resolution of the Communities in (year 2002).

Presidency of the National Assembly

On January 5, 2017, he assumed the eighth administration of the National Assembly of Venezuela. His management during the IV Legislature of this institution was marked by the institutional crisis in Venezuela.

On March 30, 2017, the Supreme Court of Justice issued sentences numbers 155 and 156 that ordered the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ to assume the functions of the National Assembly, which it described as a coup d'état and publicly rejected by breaking the sentence issued. Due to this fact, protests were unleashed that would last at least 5 months. Subsequently, on July 5, 2017, there was a siege of the Federal Legislative Palace in which several deputies were attacked.

In August 2017, Borges' driver accidentally ran over a child in the street, when the minor was riding a bicycle. Both the driver and Borges get out of the vehicle, a fact that determines that Borges was not driving, and the unfortunate event was recorded in a video that was broadcast on social networks. Commenting on the incident later, Borges stated: "When I was being dropped off at my house, a member of my team accidentally ran over a child, the son of neighbors and a family that we highly respected. Unfortunately, when we were on the way to the clinic he passed away. »

During his administration, a humanitarian emergency was declared in Venezuela due to food shortages and alleged acts of corruption behind the importation of food for the government program: Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) were investigated.

Requested international banks not to make loans to the administration of Nicolás Maduro by failing to comply with article 150 of the Constitution. After the US sanctions on Venezuela at the beginning of November 2018, for money laundering, money from the sale of gold extracted from Venezuelan mines; Borges sent a public letter to the Bank of England, to prevent the repatriation of national gold in its vaults to Venezuela, to warn about the corruption of the Maduro government and to support the sanctions issued by the United States Treasury, against transactions in gold with “corrupt or deceptive” motivations.

In September 2017 he held meetings in Europe with the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the president of the Spanish government Mariano Rajoy and the Prime Minister of England Theresa May, in order to reject the call to the 2017 National Constituent Assembly. In March 2018, the presidents: Sebastián Piñera, Enrique Peña Nieto, Mauricio Macri, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski held meetings in America with the vice president of the United States Mike Pence seeking support for The international community was unaware of the 2018 presidential elections.

After the protests in Venezuela in 2017, in September, the government and the opposition began talks again in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in which he served as opposition spokesperson. In February 2018, he indicated that he received threats for not signing the agreement proposed by the administration of Nicolás Maduro, which ended the negotiation and for which he did not return to Venezuela.

Venezuela presidential crisis 2019

Julio Borges was appointed on January 29, 2019 as representative of Venezuela before the Lima group by the opposition leader and partially recognized as president of the country Juan Guaidó. In August 2019 he was appointed presidential commissioner for Foreign Relations by Guaidó within the newly created Government Center, a position that would resemble the role of a chancellor. On September 10, 2021, Borges proposed that Monómeros be managed by a trust, which could be managed by the World Bank or the IDB while a democratic government is reestablished. This position of Borjes not supported by Guaidó intensified the distance between both politicians.

He participated in Assemblies of international organizations such as the UN and OAS requesting universal justice for the alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Maduro administration. Faced with corruption scandals by the Guaidó administration, he requested accountability from the Guaidó administration on different occasions. interim government.

On December 5, 2021, Borges resigned from his positions within the interim government, and accused Guaidó of wanting to perpetuate "the notion of an interim government has to disappear. We cannot continue with a bureaucracy of almost 1,600 people. The interim government already wants to perpetuate itself." Borges also stated that the United States' support for Guaidó in the end has no importance compared to "what the country says." He also recognized that the Venezuelan opposition has lost international support and legitimacy due to " too many mistakes and scandals.

Controversies

Physical attacks

On April 30, 2013, in response to the request for the right to speak about the results of the 2013 presidential elections, several parliament deputies were attacked, including Borges, who was hit by another deputy, resulting in a broken nose.

On June 9, 2016, while he was in front of the National Electoral Council requesting the activation of a Recall Referendum against Nicolás Maduro, he was hit with a wooden bar on the back and nose by alleged PSUV sympathizers.

Breakthrough of parliamentary immunity

In August 2018, he was involved along with fellow deputy Juan Requesens in the events of the attack against Nicolás Maduro; Diosdado Cabello announced that the withdrawal of parliamentary immunity "from deputies involved in the assassination" would be discussed. On the 8th of that month, the Public Ministry asked the Supreme Court of Justice to issue a ruling to give rise to the removal of Requesens' parliamentary immunity., which was carried out and sent to the National Constituent Assembly who approved it.

On August 10, the Minister of Information Jorge Rodríguez reported on national television that they requested a red code from Interpol to capture Julio Borges, whom he described as a "murderer", he also showed a video of the deputy to the National Assembly Juan Requesens in a situation of detainee of his freedom in which he assured that he had collaborated with the entry into the country of the perpetrators of the alleged attack. Juan Requesens: “Several weeks ago I was contacted by Julio Borges, who asked me for the favor of transferring a person from Venezuela to Colombia. This is Juan Monasterios, I contacted him through messaging. “I was in San Cristóbal,” he explains at the beginning of the video. He added that he wrote to the Colombian Immigration official, Mauricio Jiménez, to help him move to Monasterios. However, in his statement he does not give details regarding an attack on the President of the Republic. “I wrote to Mauricio Jiménez, immigration supervisor, and I made the request and he immediately contacted Juan Monasterios to make the transfer from San Antonio to Cúcuta,” he said. Borges and the opposition denounced that Requesens was drugged and tortured to obtain statements. A source from the Primero Justicia party assured that the parliamentarian was drugged to force him to testify and when the officials realized that Requesens was still conscious, they continued drugging him until the deputy could not control his sphincters. The source indicated that Requesens was threatened with murdering his parents and raping his sister. In the video, the deputy is seen in underwear stained with excrement while a man asks him to turn around.

Refuge in Colombia

Since February 2018, he has been in Colombia after reporting threats for not accepting the conditions offered by the Maduro Government in the talks in the Dominican Republic to reach an agreement that would resolve the political crisis. The Colombian Government granted him refugee status in October 2018 and has rejected a possible extradition.

Arrest warrant

In 2020, the Supreme Court of Justice ordered his arrest for allegedly participating in the 2018 Caracas Attack against Nicolás Maduro. On July 13, 2020, the Attorney General's Office issued an arrest warrant for the alleged crimes of treason, usurpation of functions and association to commit a crime. On January 16, 2023, the Attorney General of Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, announces that the Public Ministry has requested a third arrest warrant against Borges, this time for his participation in the uprising against Nicolás Maduro in 2019.

Disabling

The Comptroller General of the Republic has disqualified him from holding public office for 30 years, first on August 15, 2019 for allegedly hiding information about his personal assets and later on February 23, 2021 due to the presumption of refuse to make your declaration of assets.

Recognitions

The European Parliament awarded him, along with other opposition leaders, the Sakharov Prize in 2017, in recognition of human rights defenders.

Publications

In 2022 he published the book “The Homeland that Comes”, a work that he prepared together with the Venezuelan journalist, Paola Bautista de Alemán, and that collects his ideas about the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 in Venezuela.