The playing field for a possible negotiation in Venezuela has two extreme arcs: the insistence on fraud by President Nicolás Maduro and the recognition that a transition must be initiated.
Maduro published the minutes of the Doha Agreement that his government and the United States signed on September 28, 2023, while Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has accepted the opposition’s data as valid and called on Venezuelan political parties to “begin to discuss a respectful and peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people.”
The three-page memorandum published by Maduro on his social network X account has three stages. It includes an outline of the electoral route – which would be expanded in the Barbados agreement; the specific relaxation of sectoral sanctions on the oil industry; the granting of licenses to the companies Eni, Repsol and Maurel and Prom, as well as to Trinidad and Tobago. Likewise, it was agreed to authorize financial transactions associated with the Bank of Venezuela. EL PAÍS confirmed with a direct source from the US government that what Maduro published corresponds to the aforementioned agreement.
From a purely political perspective, the Doha agreement provided guarantees for the holding of elections in 2024. The release of 25 political prisoners and the invitation of international observers from the European Union, the Carter Center and the UN panel of experts were explicitly included.
Maduro has said he is eager to resume negotiations based on what was agreed in Qatar, the result of bilateral talks between Washington and Caracas.
The Doha agreement established that once the new, “duly elected” president took office, the United States would unblock Venezuelan government assets. It would have been a good deal, but the president and his leadership did not count on the massive vote in favor of an opposition candidate, whom the United States now recognizes as the winner.
How can we convince Maduro and those around him that the game has changed and it is time to leave power?
For Jennifer McCoy, former director of the Carter Center for the Americas, the Maduro government, unlike other authoritarian governments, has a particularity that adds another layer to the already complex situation: its relationship with criminal groups, which she compares to what was the government of General Noriega in Panama.
“It would have been preferable to have negotiations before the election, but there is still time, especially to reach an agreement that would allow for transparency in the results. The problem is that this is only to gain time, because the real negotiation is what guarantees to offer Maduro and his group so that they agree to leave power.”
In his opinion, lifting the requests for a reward against the president and his entourage may be difficult, but not impossible. Then there is the investigation in the International Criminal Court, but there could be a way out of that as well, as there was in Colombia.
What is not clear is what to do with criminal groups that depend on the government for their business.
While there is much movement behind the scenes, due to attempts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to achieve a Solomonic solution, the mere possibility of some negotiation appears as a hope that the plunder and the election of July 28 by Maduro and the other organs of public power will not come to fruition.
The special session of the Organization of American States, which ended on Wednesday without an agreement, was a kind of test to gauge positions and identify possible intermediaries.
For Laura Dib, director of the Venezuela program at WOLA, the Office of Latin American Affairs in Washington, this is not the time for performative or spectacle politics. “The statements from Brazil and Colombia, and more ambiguously from Mexico, reflect a call across all governments, regardless of their ideological position. The call is the same: for transparency and the publication of auditable minutes.”
The problem has passed the results phase because the CNE has not complied with the requirements of its transparency; it does not enter into the legal field because the TSJ is not independent. Everything is in the purely political sphere. The terrain there is swampy.
The parties appear willing to toughen up. Machado called for a public demonstration on Saturday, while the Supreme Court of Justice, at Maduro’s request, accepted a request for protection from the president who appealed to a power that is not independent, to intervene in the electoral act and threatened with more repression. The National Electoral Council has not delivered the results for tables and voting centers and suspended all activities to audit the votes.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has made it clear: “Do not seek us out to negotiate results. Popular sovereignty is not negotiable, what we are willing to negotiate is a peaceful transition (…) that the National Electoral Council (CNE) show the records once and for all” she said on Tuesday 31st, at a massive citizens’ meeting.
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