Caracas, Feb 18 (EFE).– The former presidents of Costa Rica and Poland – Oscar Arias and Lech Walesa, respectively, both of whom are Nobel Peace Prize winners – are in Venezuela to support political prisoners and on Thursday participated in a special session of parliament at which they criticized the country’s economic model and urged lawmakers to work together to get out of the current crisis.

“Venezuelan is currently going through a humanitarian emergency that is the direct consequence of mistaken public policies … It’s not possible to get out of this crisis by going more deeply into the current economic model. Rather, it must be abandoned,” said Arias.

The Costa Rican said that in the Dec. 6 legislative elections, in which the opposition won a majority, Venezuelan voters demanded “a profound change of course.”

The South American nation “will manage to emerge” from the crisis only by “joint action by the public and private sectors,” he said.

Arias urged lawmakers – among other measures – to correct “price distortions,” change the currency control measures that “enrich a few and impoverish the majority” and “return legal security to the private sector” with an eye toward creating confidence among investors and sparking job creation.

“The recovery will also require the involvement of international financial organizations,” he said.

Meanwhile, Walesa said that Venezuela has great wealth that “is not being taken advantage of.”

“There’s no worse thing than leaving the free market,” said the former Polish union leader and, later, president, urging the opposition and Chavismo supporters, whose representatives did not attend the special legislative session, to discuss solutions to the problem. EFE