From Bogota
“We have brought the entire Venezuelan opposition to the electoral field,” said President Nicolás Maduro Tuesday night His television address occurred after the expected announcement of participation by lto opposition nucleated together with Juan Guaidó, the so-called Democratic Platform, in the elections to governors and mayors which will take place on November 21.
The decision transmitted by the historical leader of Acción Democrática (AD), Henry Ramos Allup, was the confirmation of what was fragilely anticipated at the beginning of the year and, more strongly, in recent months and weeks. Along that path, there were three central moments: the announcement in May of the negotiated formation of a new National Electoral Council made up of Chavista and opposition members, the first confirmations of a rapprochement between the opposition nucleated with Guaidó and the government, and, finally, the beginning of the dialogues in Mexico on August 13.
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These events were in turn accompanied by visits from international delegations, such as those of the Kingdom of Norway, a central actor in the dialogues, or of the European Union which, in June, was in Caracas to evaluate a possible deployment of an electoral mission in November. The United States, for its part, worked during those months in a public speech in support of the dialogue from its position of determining force, being the one who maintains the economic blockade on the country and can, consequently, lift or maintain sanctions.
Allup stressed on Tuesday that the decision to participate in November has “the approval of the international community, of the United States, Canada and the European Union”. The AD spokesperson should also clarify that the absence at the press conference of Guaidó and his political party Voluntad Popular (VP) does not mean a disagreement: “his party is participating, Leopoldo (López) is participating, he himself has proposed candidates” .
VP, hours before, gave a statement through his leader Freddy Guevara, in which he affirmed his position of bet on a “Negotiated solution” and the need to end what he called the “vicious circle dynamic”: “we have years in which one of the parties feels strong and we think that we will be able to crush the other, and when the other party feels strong, it also assumes and believes that it can completely displace or eliminate the other ”.
The announcement of participation in the elections in the framework of the Mexican dialogues indicates that it could be facing a change of stage in the conflict, after years of escalation that began with the ignorance of the 2018 presidential elections. Guaidó’s self-proclamation as “interim president” in 2019, followed by the attempted entry of “international aid” to Venezuela from Colombia, the failed coup on April 30 led by Guaidó and López -with the presence of Allup-, the arrival of mercenaries for Operation Gideon in April 2020, until the electoral abstention in the legislative elections of 2020.
The return to the elections by that sector of the opposition means a recognition, both internally, and especially by Washington and its new administration, of the impossibility of having achieved the overthrow of Maduro with the so-called maximum pressure. “I’m going to sit in my armchair with my television on and my popcorn (popcorn) to see Juan Guaidó voting on November 21, and there I will applaud because we succeeded, to include him in democracy again,” Maduro said on Tuesday at the evening.
It is not the first time that a return to the polls has occurred after a coup defeat. In 2017, after the escalation of mobilizations on the right, armed violence and a call to the Bolivarian National Armed Forces not to recognize Maduro, a part of the opposition, led by Allup, decided to stand in the municipal and regional elections, and another opted for abstention.
Since then, the opposition map began to fragment until it became the current five sectors. On the one hand, those who appeared in the 2018 presidential elections and then formed the Dialogue Table in 2019, on the other hand, those who broke with Guaidó from the legislature in 2020 and later internally divided their parties as AD and Primero Justicia ( PJ), thirdly, the opposition actors that made up Fuerza Vecinal, which brings together opponents at the head of mayoralties, fourthly, the forces articulated around Guaidó, that is, part of AD, PJ, VP and Un Nuevo Tiempo, and, finally, those who maintain an abstentionist position, such as María Corina Machado and now also David Smolansky, from VP.
The last sector to join the elections has the challenge of promoting an electoral campaign explaining the turn, that is, why now the strategy is to participate and not abstain. “The concessions that have been achieved are obviously through negotiation. We do not have all the guarantees, but we cannot, if we do not have 100% of the guarantees, we will not participate (…) we understand that the elections will be a useful field of struggle to strengthen citizenship and promote the true solution to the serious crisis of our country: free presidential and legislative elections, “said Allup.
Chavismo, in this scenario, will go to the elections with the strengthening, not without tensions, which meant the primary elections of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with 3.5 million voters, to elect candidates for mayors and governors. November will be a time to measure political forces, electoral participation after several years of decline in the context of social, political and economic exhaustion. Before the war, there could be new advances in the framework of the dialogues that will resume in the coming days in Mexico, and it will progressively clarify whether the conflict will actually enter a necessary new stage or, on the contrary, a well-known repetition of sequences will continue.
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