The disqualification of María Corina Machado threatens the international opening of Venezuela

The disqualification of María Corina Machado threatens the international opening that Venezuela has experienced in recent months.

This Monday, the White House gave a period of two months for the Government of Nicolás Maduro to allow opposition candidates eliminated from the race to participate in the presidential elections, scheduled for this year.

Washington has also revoked one of the gold exploitation licenses signed after the agreements reached between Chavismo and the opposition in Barbados.

This is the response of the United States to the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice in which the vetoes were reiterated against María Corina Machado, the opposition candidate who won the primaries, and the former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.

The April deadline is subject to the expiration of the package of decrees signed last November, in which licenses were granted to United States oil companies.

That was what Washington conceded to get Chavismo to sit down again to negotiate with the opposition an electoral solution to the Venezuelan crisis.

A relief that, in practice, has had little impact on the country's economic situation, but which represented a significant first step.

Chavismo has made its interpretation of the Barbados agreements.

He opened the way for four lesser candidates during the procedures agreed upon in the negotiations and blocked Machado, who leads in the polls, and the veteran Capriles, who already faced Maduro in the 2013 elections. The United States has not been satisfied with the response and has tried to prolong the negotiation with a gradual withdrawal of concessions.

“They have decisions to make: allow opposition parties and candidates to participate properly and release political prisoners.

They have until April,” the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, said at a press conference.

At the same time, the Treasury Department updated a license that involves the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana and Minerven, which control the marketing of gold and all production in the mines in southern Venezuela.

Before February 13, operations with the state company must be closed.

The rope is stretched to the maximum to return to another stagnation of the crisis in Venezuela.

Machado maintains, for now, his candidacy.

Chavismo aspires to turn the page and move forward, although its direct dialogue with Washington runs the risk of breaking down.

Jorge Rodríguez, president of Parliament and head of the delegation that negotiates with the opposition and the United States, has reiterated that the disqualification is irrevocable.

Venezuela has suspended the rights to run for Machado, whom it accuses of being part of a corruption plot generated during the interim of Juan Guaidó, for which she was already disqualified in 2021, as part of the same file that the Comptroller's Office opened in 2014. for alleged irregularities in her sworn declaration of assets from when she was a deputy.

In the movements of recent months, Chavismo achieved relief from sanctions that made oil companies from around the world re-establish business with PDVSA.

He also managed to exchange businessman Alex Saab for Americans detained in Venezuela and a group of political prisoners.

Saab was detained in Miami accused of alleged money laundering.

For the Government he is a key asset and Maduro himself has said that he operated as a “special envoy” to manage supplies for Venezuela in the midst of the financial blockade that the sanctions implied.

Now, when that siege could be tightened again, he is on the front line at the head of the Venezuelan International Investment Center.

The United States, for its part, enabled deportation flights to Venezuela, as a measure to address the immigration issue, one of the most critical points for Joe Biden, who will undergo electoral scrutiny again this year.

The opposition continued to receive judicial blows and harassment from those in power.

The Government has denounced five conspiracies and has linked Machado's team in those files, without further evidence, and taken several of his collaborators to prison.

These alleged assassination plans have served to accuse the opposition of violating the Barbados agreements, while further cornering the main candidate of the coalition of parties that is fighting for a change of government after 25 years of Chavismo.

Machado has said that she remains aware of the negotiations that are taking place between the United States and the Maduro Government.

His intention to challenge the decision of the judiciary and remain in the electoral race, in which he leads by far the polls that have been made public, tightens the rope in an issue in which Chavismo has not proven to be involved, at least for the time being. moment, ready to give in.

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