Politics
Luis Herrero, the Spanish deputy of the European Parliament who was expelled last Friday from Venezuela after having called President Hugo Chávez a "dictator" and criticized the National Electoral Council (CNE), said on Sunday, in arriving in Madrid, that he regrets "absolutely nothing" about what he said in Caracas.

Herrero, a deputy for the right-wing People's Party, which forms part of the bloc of the European People's Party (PPE), told the Spanish reporters who were waiting for his arrival in Madrid airport, that he would remove "not a single comma" of his remarks made in Venezuela.

The senior official had been invited to Caracas by opposition political Copei party to follow up a referendum held on Sunday. He was expelled on Friday for calling President Chávez "dictator" and lashing out at the CNE, said the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, AFP quoted.

When speaking to the Venezuelan press, the deputy urged Venezuelans to "vote in freedom and not for fear, as a dictator is trying to spread."

Chávez is "a guy who does not understand the rules of democracy," said Herrero in Madrid, after commenting that what he saw and listened to in Venezuela seemed to him "absolutely not presentable."