By Gabriel Vera Lopes on August 20, 2021
photo: Bill Hackwell
On August 13, a new round of negotiations began between the Venezuelan government and part of the opposition, which had been refusing to participate in the electoral elections or to recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate elected president.The meeting took place in Mexico with the approval of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, through his Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, received and greeted both delegations.
This is the fifth attempt by the government to build, outside Venezuela, a dialogue aimed at reaching an agreement, with the objective of coming to an understanding that will provide a solution to the conflict and the siege that the country has been living for years. The negotiations are being mediated by the Norway, which had already participated in the previous attempt in 2019. In addition, the Netherlands, on the side of the opposition, and the Russian Federation, on the side of the government, are accompanying the process.
The government hopes that the dialogues will help to achieve social and economic stability in the country, in view of the upcoming elections to be held next November 21. It is thus aiming to neutralize the most belligerent elements of the opposition. Its delegation was composed of the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez; the governor of the central state of Miranda, Héctor Rodríguez; and Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of the president and deputy to the National Assembly.
On the other hand, the different factions of the opposition seek to air their representativeness. They arrive at this situation after having depleted their political capital by refusing political-institutional participation for the sake of their strategy of building a parallel government, headed by “the interim government” of Juan Guaidó and sponsored by the US.
The joint delegation of the different factions of the oppositions was composed of nine delegates, which reflects their difficulties to build a coordinated and unitary spokesperson and interlocution. Among the most prominent figures, it is worth mentioning: Carlos Vecchio, current “ambassador” to the U.S. for Guaidó’s self-proclaimed government and national coordinator of Voluntad Popular; Gerardo Blyde, current president of the Mesa de Unidad Democrática campaign command; and Tomás Guanipa, “former diplomatic representative in Colombia” for Guaidó and current secretary general of Primero Justicia.
The open process has generated both expectations and distrust, based on a long list of frustrated negotiations. Aware of this, and after having systematically rejected any kind of dialogue, the opposition, through Gerardo Blyde, asked for confidence in the process. In tune, Antony Bilken, US Secretary of State, welcomed the process stating: “We join the EU and Canada in urging the parties to reach lasting agreements that will lead to the democratic future that Venezuelans deserve”.
At this point it is worth asking: what changes occurred for the opposition to modify its strategy? To come up with an answer it is necessary to go over the sequence of events.
In February 2018, in the Dominican Republic, all the conditions were in place to sign an agreement between both parties. The so-called G4 -now Plataforma Unitaria- and the Bolivarian Government had agreed -accepting the demands of the opposition- to participate in the presidential elections, which would be brought forward to the first semester of that year by means of a request to the National Electoral Council. The then President of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina, acted as host.
However, against all odds, Medina announced suddenly that the dialogue had entered into an indefinite recess after the opposition delegation did not recognize the agreement. Despite the agreement, the opposition presented a new list of demands, alleging that “it was not obliged to affirm what had been agreed up until then”. The sudden turn in the negotiations, together with the lack of confessable reasons, made one of the most preeminent mediators, former Spanish President José-Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, with an undeniable aversion to Chavism, to publish an open letter to the opposition urging it to subscribe to what had been agreed “once the Government has committed itself to scrupulously respect what had been agreed”.
By that time, the opposition had received a call from Bogotá from an envoy of the US State Department instructing that negotiations would not be the plan to follow, becoming an omen of the attempt to overthrow the government that would come in the following years.
This fraction of the opposition refused to participate in the presidential elections. Subsequently, it did not recognize the elections and the victory of Chavismo, rejecting Maduro’s inauguration of his second term, calling it ”usurpation”. Finally, on January 23, on the grounds of a “presidential vacancy”, the then president of the National Assembly, Deputy Juan Guaidó, proclaimed himself president of the nation. Immediately, as if it were a synchronized watch, the then President of the United States, Donald Trump, recognized the new “interim president”, followed by his entourage of governments gathered in the Lima Group: Martin Vizcarra, in Peru; Macri, in Argentina; Bolsonaro, in Brazil; Iván Duque, in Colombia; etc.
Thus began an unprecedented chapter in the chronology of the siege against the Bolivarian Revolution. Its strategic purpose consisted in the construction of a parallel institutionality aimed at the overthrow of the government.
After Guaidó’s self-proclamation, Citgo, the main subsidiary of the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) on US soil -which processes some 750,000 barrels of crude oil per day-, was retained by the US government and its remittances transferred to Guaidó. In turn, the Trump administration, froze all Venezuelan assets in US jurisdiction. The Bank of England in turn retained Venezuelan gold deposited in its coffers, with an estimated value of US$1 billion, giving power of use to the “interim government”.
Thus, the application of Unilateral Coercive Measures (U.C.M.) against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which had been carried out since the end of 2014 under the administration of Democrat Obama, were intensified with the administration of Republican Donald Trump. These measures resulted in an economic, financial and commercial blockade that mainly affects the Venezuelan population.
In this scenario, various actions of force were tried against the government. Actions aimed at articulating with the uneasiness resulting from the blockade and the strangulation of the economy. First, the attempt to bring in supposed “humanitarian aid” from Colombia. Then, under the name of “Operation Liberty”, a coup attempt was rehearsed on April 30, 2019: the uprising was led by Juan Guaidó himself in the company of military and police troops and began with the release of Leopoldo López, leader of Voluntad Popular, who was under house arrest. The US Vice President himself, Mike Pence, greeted the attempt by calling for mobilization in support of the uprising. However, the chain of command of the security forces and the army was not broken and the attempt was neutralized. Finally, in May 2020, under the name of “Operation Gideon”, a group of mercenaries attempted to enter the country through the Caribbean coast, near Caracas. However, the popular militias of the town of Chuao thwarted this incursion.
In order to achieve their purpose, these coups d’etat needed two conditions: the mobilization of a broad social sector in support of these measures, on the one hand, and the breakup of the Armed Forces in a determined support to the coup attempts, on the other hand. Neither of these conditions succeeded in coming about.
In this sense, the coup strategy of this sector of the right wing and the U.S. government did not achieve its main immediate objective. On the contrary, it generated a high degree of repudiation in sectors of the population that did not support the Maduro government. At the same time, it fragmented the opposition and lost internal ground against the opposition variables that did participate in the elections, as in the case of the parliamentary elections of 2020.
So now the main change in the political situation is related to the virtual failure of the strategy of this sector and its loss of gravitation among the domestic opposition. This element is combined with a change in the correlation of forces in the continent, as a result of the popular rebellions that are sweeping the continent and the retreat of the Lima Group.
That is why the simple fact that these sectors must once again accept the government’s proposal to generate a dialogue is a victory for chavismo. It is the transition from an inflamed rhetoric marked by the demand for the “end of the usurpation” to the acceptance of the dialogue.
However, it is necessary not to underestimate the damage that these strategies have caused both to the government and to the population as a whole, mainly in relation to the blockade and the economic coercive measures. The latter generate a distressing social unrest in a population that must survive in an increasingly battered and cornered economy.
In the current round of negotiations, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two parties.
It sets out a sort of “road map” of the points to be agreed upon. The next round of talks will take place from September 3 to 6. Seven points were agreed upon in the memorandum: political rights for all; electoral guarantees; lifting of “sanctions”; respect for the Constitutional State; political and social coexistence; protection of the national economy; and guarantees for the implementation and follow-up of the agreements.
The point referring to the lifting of economic sanctions is of special importance, since, in the words of Benigno Alarcón Deza -director of the opposition media politikaucab- it is both the main point of Chavismo’s demands and “the most important pressure on the government and the only point of leverage”.
On this point, the memorandum proposes an agreement on “the need for sanctions against the Venezuelan State to be lifted, vindicating independence, freedom, sovereignty, immunity, territorial integrity and national self-determination as inalienable rights of the nation”. In this way, as stated by Franco Vielma, “a commitment is established by the parties in the recognition of the blockade of the country as a harmful act of external interference.”
It should be recalled that the negotiation table in Mexico is being held simultaneously with the electoral process called for November 21, in which governors and mayors will be elected for the period 2021-2025. Currently, from August 9 to 29 of the same month, the nomination stage of the competing lists is taking place.
The PSUV has already registered its candidates, which were selected through Open Primary Elections (EPA) within the Party. The primaries have been transformed into a great campaign of political debate and mobilization of the ranks of Chavismo; a process that enables a generational replacement and a reorganization of the party’s power structure. On the other hand, Nicolás Maduro, President of the PSUV, has been indicating that the party militancy should focus on the construction of the Communal State, Chávez’s legacy and strategic project.
The international follow up of the dialogue tables will be a pressure point for them to reach some port and not be shipwrecked. It remains to be seen if the right wing changes its tactics in pursuit of the construction of an electorally competitive alternative that tries to collect a good part of the uneasiness it itself caused or if, on the contrary, it will be identified as the main responsible party. Be that as it may, the change of play by the opposition does not mean the renunciation of its strategic objective: the overthrow of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Source: Alainet, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English