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Maduro's pardons stir up the opposition's debate ahead of the elections in Venezuela

2020-09-01T20:57:21.067Z


The grace measures and the progress of the negotiations with the Capriles sector increase the possibility that an opposition sector will go to the parliamentarians


Roberto Marrero, head of Juan Guaidó's office, speaks with journalists after Maduro's pardon, DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

With Nicolás Maduro's decision to grant a presidential pardon to 110 Venezuelans, among them political leaders, exiled deputies, civil activists and journalists, the Government of Venezuela has carried out a cunning maneuver in which, as in some martial arts, it seeks to neutralize the enemy using his own strength.

The grace measures and the progress in negotiations with a sector of the opposition lead it to participate in the elections scheduled for the end of the year.

Chavismo is working in a hurry to organize legislative elections that will allow it to stabilize its political floor and resume, even partially, its relations with the international community in the midst of a serious economic and social stagnation that has lasted for five years.

In this context, Nicolás Maduro has been making statements about peace, reconciliation and democracy this week.

The Miraflores Palace has advanced negotiations with some opposition leaders, such as the two-time former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, specifying a grace measure that is unprecedented in two decades of Chavismo and of a much greater magnitude than expected around the bulky list of political prisoners in the country.

In doing so, he seeks to commit some of his adversaries to break ranks to the detriment of what the opposition leader Juan Guaidó has ordered, still recognized as interim president of Venezuela by a large part of the international community and are encouraged to participate in the parliamentary elections, whose democratic legitimacy it needs at all costs.

Chavismo offers this unusual show of largesse at a particularly critical moment for the opposition forces, whose central strategy has been offering clear signs of exhaustion for months.

Refused to attend the parliamentary consultation under these conditions, Juan Guaidó and the bulk of the opposition platform that accompanies him have had problems these weeks to design a consistent alternative strategy against the Chavista electoral lure.

Guaidó has tried to broaden his political space by consulting the opinion of other leaders of the democratic field, critical of his administration, such as María Corina Machado and Capriles himself.

Disagreements and parallel agendas have produced no results, and have contributed to discouragement.

Capriles and Guaidó had planned to hold a meeting that they suspended after the presidential pardon, a blow to Guaidó's waterline.

The parties that support him are waiting for Capriles to publicly assume his responsibility in the negotiations that have produced these liberations of prisoners and to finish formalizing his decision to attend Maduro's parliamentary elections.

Capriles' agenda would include the possibility of persuading Chavismo to postpone - not suspend - the elections, in favor of better conditions.

Despite the difficulties in agreeing with his critics and his loss of traction as a leader, Juan Guaidó received, once again, the express support of the United States these days.

The business secretary of the United States Embassy in Caracas, James Story, and the person in charge of the State Department for the Venezuelan crisis, Elliott Abrams, have taken Guaidó's route as their own and have veiled criticism of María Corina Machado for her determination to promote a military intervention in the country.

Regarding Capriles's proposals, however, they have not positioned themselves.

Yes, the pardon has been welcomed by both the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the European Union, Josep Borrell.

Luis Vicente León, economist, political analyst and director of the Datanálisis firm, thinks that Maduro's “is a measure that seeks to make a government-controlled parliamentary election more drinkable, with which it seeks to validate itself in front of its own political market and add also a punch in the existing fracture in the opposition ”.

Aware of the differences and the difficulty of presenting a consistent alternative response in this new context - now accentuated, thanks to the unexpected Chavista measure - the opposition leadership linked to Guaidó has been holding closed-door meetings for days, expanding as far as possible its spectrum of consultations on the steps to take.

Surrounded by the discourse of moderate and radicalized sectors, Guiadó took a position on the pardons through social networks, several hours after the presidential decision: “Today the regime released hostages, and with it recognized a long list of political prisoners and persecuted , proof that it is a dictatorship and the attack against the National Assembly ”.

“We all want this to contribute to reconciliation,” he continues, “but that will only happen with respect to Parliament, the constitutional designation of the CNE, restoring the parties and the independence of powers.

That is the way.

Fighting together is how we will get the usurper out of Miraflores. "

Maduro's pardons have increased the voices of the critical front that Guaidó has in his own ranks, according to which his diagnosis is full of abstractions and should give way to a more realistic policy, which necessarily involves making some concessions and encouraging himself to go through a electoral route.

Michael Penfold, a political scientist and international consultant, believes that the latest events in the country “are the result of a dilemma that both Maduro and the opposition are facing.

For the regime, going to an election similar to the one in 2018 may not be accepted, even in the domestic sector.

Guaidó is facing the problem of not having a realistic, viable option at hand, not to go to vote.

With this decision Capriles is forcing to create a space for negotiation, to see if certain minimum conditions are opened, to explore the electoral option.

Trying to force, also, the G-4, to modify a policy that in practice is not working.

Capriles' policy has very high risks, but it opens at a time of great inertia, and in that sense what it has done has a relevant impact ”.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-09-01

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