The Colombian government is warming up for the International Conference on Venezuela, which will take place in Bogotá this Tuesday, April 25, with the attendance of delegates from twenty countries.
Gustavo Petro and his Foreign Minister, Álvaro Leyva, met with representatives of the opposition Venezuelan Unitary Platform in Hato Grande, the presidential residence located on the outskirts of Bogotá, on Saturday night (early morning in Spain).
They want Nicolás Maduro and the political opposition to resume dialogue in Mexico in order to agree on transparent elections in 2024.
“It is an agreement that has to be between Venezuelans, which implies an electoral schedule with guarantees and the lifting of sanctions in parallel,” Leyva reported at the end of the meeting. “The situation is given, we are talking about elections next year. Depending on what comes out of those elections, another electoral process will come in 2025 that has to do with the collegiate bodies and all those other elections that must take place.”
The spokesman and coordinator of the Unitary Platform, Gerardo Blyde, who attended the meeting along with Stalin González and Tomás Guanipa, among others, affirmed that “our intention continues to be to reach the agreements that the country requires so that there are free elections.”
Regarding the summit on Tuesday, he expressed that they support its holding and are confident that it will achieve its purpose of bringing the parties back to the table in the Mexican capital. With clean elections, they hope to generate the conditions “to recover the Venezuelan economy, so that there are no political prisoners, no persecuted and the violations of human rights in our country cease.” In short, that a political force opposed to the one that has governed his country for twenty-three years can win at the polls and make Venezuela the democratic and prosperous country that Chavismo completely ruined.
But there is still a long and tortuous road to travel. Gustavo Petro intends to somehow lead the route and guide them to a good port. He has already met Nicolás Maduro four times, all of them in Venezuela, and Saturday’s was his first meeting with rivals of the old Miraflores tenant.
Also in his recent visit to Joe Biden he addressed the issue, which is a priority for his ambassador to the White House, Luis Gilberto Murillo. “A strategy was raised on the table that is to hold elections first and then lift sanctions or, gradually, to the extent that an electoral agenda is being fulfilled,” Petro told the media as he left the Oval Office.
For now, the US administration has shown caution, but it supports the Colombian initiative for the International Conference and will send a delegation to Bogota headed by the White House director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan González, Senator Chris Dodd, special presidential advisor for Americas, and Jon Finer, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor.
Although in Washington they have expressed interest in changing the strategy of the Trump administration, of applying strong economic sanctions both to the country and to dozens of Chavista leaders who laundered public money stolen in Venezuela in the United States, for now they are keeping them alive.
But not all of Maduro’s opponents receive the summit in the Colombian capital with optimism or notice in Miraflores a change in attitude towards the restoration of democracy. María Corina Machado, presidential candidate and one of the most critical voices of Chavismo, views Gustavo Petro’s initiative with skepticism.
“It is a regime that starves society, while looting Venezuela and promoting emigration,” he told the Colombian channel NTN24. “We are only going to stop it if we dismantle this mafias system. The big question is whether this new dialogue will be to see how they understand each other or to really establish terms that favor a transition towards democracy in Venezuela.”
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