A new opposition platform that aims to distance itself from radicalism and reduce the polarization in the public debate has emerged these days in Venezuela.
It is led by three well-known opposition political leaders: Timoteo Zambrano, Luis Augusto Romero and Antonio Ecarri.
“The reality is that today Venezuela is a much more pluralistic country than it seems.
More than 70% of Venezuelans do not want to know anything about the political class that has governed in the last 25 years.
It is very worn out and the country wants to look for alternatives”, says Ecarri by phone.
Precisely the three leaders have been meeting this Thursday in Madrid with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
The meeting was joined by Juan Fernández Trigo, Secretary of State for Ibero-America, recently arrived from the diplomats' summit that was held in Bogotá at the request of Gustavo Petro to discuss the Venezuelan crisis.
The 20 countries summoned did not agree and at the end the Colombian foreign minister, alone, read a three-point agreement that did not imply any novelty: the date of the 2024 elections must be set;
the agreements between Chavismo and the opposition must be accompanied by the lifting of sanctions;
and the dialogue process in Mexico must be resumed, parallel to the creation of a fund for social investment in the country.
Ecarri maintains that it is not a platform opposed to usage, but that personalities of different sensibilities are going to be integrated into it, including dissidents of Chavismo.
“We are making it up with people who come from both poles.
We want to make the country plural, that there are not only two blocks.
The country must be depolarized.
It is the only way out of the crisis in which we are immersed,” explains Ecarri, general secretary of the Pencil Alliance, the first opposition force in Caracas, the country's capital.
The opponent has remembered these days in Madrid a phrase from the former president of the Spanish courts, Torcuato Fernández Miranda, who said during the Transition that Spain could not suffer any more.
“I think the same: Venezuela cannot suffer anymore.
There must be a smooth change ”, he insists.
In the meeting with Albares, the problem of Venezuelan migration arose —it is estimated that some six million have left the country— which Ecarri assures must be tackled by offering more opportunities to the population.
“Otherwise we are going to continue generating waves and waves of migrants,” he adds.
The platform does not believe in the dialogues in Mexico, where the Chavista government and the Unitary Platform, an alliance of the largest opposition parties, are negotiating a solution to the serious political and social crisis in the country and the organization of presidential elections in 2024 with guarantees in which opponents have real options to defeat the current president, Nicolás Maduro.
"Dialogue is doomed to fail," says Ecarri bluntly.
“Not all parts of Venezuela are involved.
They are the two most rejected political fronts in the country, both Maduro and the G-4.
A more plural dialogue is needed”.
The launch of the platform that will tentatively be called the Independent Pact for Popular Change is scheduled for July.
The incorporation of the Communist Party of Venezuela has been negotiated, to which is added the Alianza del Lápiz, led by Ecarri himself;
Let's change, the force of Timoteo Zambrano who has a good parliamentary fraction;
and Advanced Progressive, by Romero.
This coalition comes at a time when the opposition is highly fragmented, which has been unable to find its place in recent years.
The missing interim government led by Juan Guaidó was a failure and the rest of the parties have not managed to unify to have a common position against Chavismo.
Of course, it is trying to fix.
When there is a date on the calendar for the elections,
the opponents will hold primaries from which a single candidate will emerge that the others have promised to support.
The new platform will present its own candidacy on the sidelines.
Follow all the international information on
and
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.