The authoritarian Venezuelan regime escalated its offensive against the opposition again this Wednesday by openly describing
the Vente Venezuela party of former deputy María Corina Machado
as a “terrorist movement.”
The Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro launched the serious accusation, in the middle of the campaign
in which he seeks a second re-election in the presidential elections in July
. The attack on Vente Venezuela in those terms sought to justify a chain of raids by the regime's political police against militants of that organization that leads the entire opposition arc and is the favorite to win power.
In recent days two other leaders of the group were arrested. There were already five others arrested and arrest warrants were issued against seven others, six of them sought refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas.
All were accused of an alleged plot to assassinate Maduro.
The regime usually uses these types of complaints about dubious assassination attempts,
without providing further evidence
, as a pretext to persecute its internal adversaries and annul them. In the official narrative, Maduro has been the target of serious conspiracies on numerous occasions, a circumstance that usually arises when the regime faces central elections, such as in 2018 when the Chavista leader won his first re-election amid a shower of allegations of fraud and manipulation of the polls. .
“
They are persecuting me to try to make an attempt on my life
, as demonstrated with the capture of the individuals of the terrorist movement called Vente Venezuela... It will be Vente Terrorista,” Maduro expressed in a broadcast on state television.
It is a particularly serious accusation because it opens the possibility that the opposition leader will also be arrested by the political police, diplomatic sources said. The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, aligned with the regime,
announced charges of “terrorism” and “attempted assassination”
against the group. The party immediately denied the accusations, calling them “baseless” and absurd.
Hugo Chávez's successor said Monday that two armed men who planned to assassinate him were detained during an event he led in Caracas after registering his candidacy for re-election, linking them to Vente Venezuela.
The Argentine government confirmed this Tuesday that the residence of its ambassador in Caracas welcomes Venezuelan opponents
in the face of "acts of harassment and persecution"
, without revealing their identities.
Opposition leader Maríaa Corina Machado, in Caracas. AFP Photo
The press published that six activists related to Machado requested refuge in that diplomatic headquarters, among them his right-hand woman, Magalli Meda, who was the candidate to replace the former deputy as the presidential candidate of the opposition group.
Machado, a favorite in the polls, won the primaries of the opposition Unitary Platform coalition last year
by more than 90 percent of the votes
but was unable to run due to a 15-year disqualification imposed by the regime. According to surveys, women have a significant difference in support among voters compared to Chavismo, which has been in power for 25 years.
The obstacles
The coalition planned to register Corina Yoris
, nominated by Machado herself to take her place, but she was unable to do so when she reported that she was blocked in the electoral authority's system. After powerful pressure from the government of Brazil, an ally of the Caracas regime, which for the first time condemned the antidemocratic operations of the Chavista nomenklatura, it accepted the registration of journalist and former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia.
The opposition registered him provisionally
to retain that possibility and since Monday they have the option of replacing him if they prefer.
This is the first time that the experiment founded by Chávez at the beginning of the century faced the possibility of being removed from power.
Maduro negotiated with Brazil,
the United States and the European Union an agreement for democratic opening, the release of political prisoners and the lifting of bans in exchange for relief from North America and for six months of economic sanctions against the Caribbean country.
Joe Biden's government also agreed to release and return to Caracas Colombian “businessman” Alex Saab, a historical partner of Maduro in business ventures with the regime detained in June 2020 in Cape Verde, accused of money laundering.
Economic hardships were eased
and the country began to experience an influx of investments in oil, gas and mining. But the regime failed to regain popularity even by reviving the old conflict over the sovereignty of Essequibo, a rich territory in the hands of Guyana.
So to guarantee its continuity, it repeated the repression model of the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, and suppressed the main opposition leaders, in particular Machado, a sure candidate to win in the election. In that sense, she spread the version of the assassination, to behead the party.
Source: AFp, AP and Clarín
P.B.