The Chavista regime and the Venezuelan opposition meet again in Mexico with the challenge of making tangible progress

The regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Unitary Platform of Venezuela, which brings together the main opposition parties, will meet again from this Friday in Mexico, the scene of some contacts that arrive with a “memorandum of understanding” under their arm . and from which tangible progress towards political agreements should start to emerge.

The two camps saw each other in mid-August, in a gesture already relevant given the public contempt they have professed in recent years, marked by a bicephay in which, in front of Maduro, the opponent Juan Guaido he defended himself in front of Venezuela and the world as president in charge and, therefore, legitimate.

However, The growing international pressure on Chavismo, through sanctions, and the lack of achievements in the opposition’s strategy have led the parties to move forward towards a process of dialogue in which Mexico acts as host and Norway. as a mediator. under the common principle that any sealed agreement must be signed without outside interference.

The first contacts in August resulted in the commitment to go back to the table September 3-6, already with a clearer “road map”, but with a message that already seems familiar in Venezuela after several failures of the dialogue process.

“The negotiation will take place on the principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, says the memorandum of understanding, yes opens the door to “the conclusion of partial agreements” if we consider that there is an “urgent” need to put them into practice.

In everyone’s mind, the regional and local elections of November 21, in which for the first time in three years the Unitary Platform has offered to participate, which once again recovers the common flag of the Table of Democratic Unity (MUD), with which the opposition has achieved its last successes electoral.

The parties of the so-called G4 – Popular Will, Democratic Action, First Justice and New Time – assume that “these will not be fair or conventional elections”, but they see it too “A useful field of struggle to strengthen citizenship and promote the real solution”, that is to say, the convocation of “free” presidential and parliamentary women.

Guaidó, member of Voluntad Popular, avoided immediately joining this call for participation, for which he initially pleaded the former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, rather favorable to the opening of new strategies and the establishment of alternative contacts.

AN AMBITIOUS AGENDA

The memorandum arouses ambitions in terms of “political rights”, “Electoral guarantees”, “Political coexistence” or “protection of the economy”. It also raises “Lifting of sanctions” and “the restoration of the right to property” which remains frozen today, one of the great demands of Maduro and his environment.

However, the two main drivers of sanctions, The United States and the European Union have already made it clear that they will not revise the sanctions until there is “significant” progress in the dialogue. Both have called for elections with guarantees and the European bloc has started testing the ground for a possible election observation mission.

The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, also maintained this week contacts with the various parties, in particular the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Félix Plasencia, who has just taken the reins of Venezuelan diplomacy after the replacement of Jorge Arreaza, who will nevertheless remain linked to the regime.

Albares also spoke on the Chavista side with Venezuelan charge d’affaires in Spain Mauricio Rodríguez, while on the opposition side he spoke with Capriles and with Leopoldo López, Guaidó’s party partner and exile in Spain.

QUESTION OF MESSAGES

While waiting for a possible consensus, the Chavist regime and the opposition are trying to make it understood that, for the moment, they have not acceded to any of the claims to the contrary, a pulse which sharpened after the announcement of the Unitary Platform on its future electoral participation.

“I am going to sit in my armchair, with the television on (…) to see Guaidó vote on November 21 and there I will applaud because we have succeeded in including him in democracy”, Maduro said this week, apparently content to avoid scenarios such as the 2018 presidential elections or the 2020 parliamentarians, when the Chavismo had no significant rivals.

Guaidó was quick to respond to the president on Twitter to remind him that there was a lot to do: “We all know that today there are no conditions or guarantees for a free and fair election”. “So much so that you are sitting as a counterpart in an international negotiation process which seeks these electoral and political guarantees and an electoral calendar,” he added, referring to the dialogue.

(With information from EuropaPress)

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