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Petro and the end of Guaidó's "interim"

2022-05-10T04:01:28.617Z


Sooner or later, the Venezuelan opposition leader will be invited by Washington to step aside. For the good of all, I say


Whatever the result of the Colombian presidential elections, it can be said with great certainty that it will precipitate the end of the "interim" of Juan Guaidó.

The “maximum pressure” strategy conceived by his political boss, Leopoldo López, sought the eviction of Nicolás Maduro with a military pronouncement backed by actions, also military but gringo, promoted by the hawks of the Trump administration.

The rhetorical dressing that the opposition formations that three years ago supported this strategy

en masse

invoked a majority support of the population and promised to undertake an unlikely transition, accompanied by the indescribable international community.

The first stop on that tortuous road to freedom would be the holding of free elections, "with credible results," despite being supervised by generals and magistrates, all hypothetical deserters

from Maduro 's

gang .

The civilian population was only expected to know how to get themselves killed in street actions that would encourage the military element rescuing our freedoms.

A Latin American classic;

the opposing imagination did not give for more.

Like almost every contemporary political initiative in our America, this strategy also implied, if not maximum, enough corruption of the interim civil service to make the struggle for US subsidies to the apparatus of a pseudo-government in exile and for the loot of Venezuelan oil assets abroad he blew up the Guaidó coalition.

A detailed and truthful account of how these actions exposed the tragic improbity of the opposition political class, taken as a whole, for the task of liberating Venezuela and democratizing it can be read in the book by William Neuman that this column reviewed.

weeks ago.

A fundamental element of the maximum pressure campaign was the strong support it received from the Government of Iván Duque.

But all this will only be

back story

, a prequel to the series that will begin on August 7, in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá.

To begin with, if Petro wins, the resumption of diplomatic relations between Caracas and Bogotá must be taken for granted.

At least that is how the candidate offered it last week during an electoral rally in Cúcuta.

“The destinations of Colombia and the other side follow the same paths.

They look alike even in their rulers.

There is nothing more similar to Maduro in Colombia than Duque”, were some of his words.

This statement is very consistent with the effort to distance itself from Chavismo, which, in the past, Petro has judged more than once with benevolence.

To tolerate a Bogota headquarters for the interim would, therefore, be completely hostile to the purpose of reopening the embassies.

Sergio Fajardo no longer looks like today – and I truly regret it – the future president of Colombia.

However, it should be noted that the coalition of the center of which he was a part and which was measured in the referendum last March, already declared in July of last year that it was committed to "reestablishing communication channels between Bogotá and Caracas, in especially, to address urgent binational issues such as the pandemic, migration, and security.”

The consensus in favor of reestablishing relations between Caracas and Bogotá has been growing in the political sphere.

And this without detriment to the planetary condemnation of the excesses of the Maduro government in regard to the human and political rights of Venezuelans.

Last October, for example, the Colombian Senate unanimously approved the proposal to create a bilateral commission for the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The president of the Senate, the conservative Juan Diego Gómez, sent a letter to the president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, who from the Federal Legislative Palace read with pleasure the proposal that had come from the Green Party caucus.

The initiative, it is known, was blocked at birth by the Colombian Presidency.

And what would Fico Gutiérrez do if he won the second round of the ballot?

His statements have been unequivocal: since Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, relations between the two countries should not be restored.

But in statements given to the Bogotá newspaper

El Tiempo

, he specifies: “Now, we have to understand that there is a reality on the border.

There are broken dreams, destroyed families and people in fear.

There is pedestrian crossing, but not vehicular.

My concept: vehicular passage should be allowed due to the issue of commerce, which is taking place anyway, although it is due to an illegal economy.”

The truth is that the constellation of circumstances that encouraged the maximum pressure strategy has dispersed and that Washington's approach to Caracas, for Ukrainian oil reasons, will not cease in the foreseeable future.

It is not likely, then, even in the event of a Fico Gutiérrez government, that the insane idea that led the Guaidó coalition and its Trump hawks astray: to make Colombia an aircraft carrier, will be relaunched.

A forecast?

Sooner or later Guaidó will be invited by Washington to step aside.

For the good of all, I say.

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Source: elparis

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