Formula for Venezuela in the face of the Petro summit touches differently than Chavismo and the opposition

MARACAIBO, VENEZUELA – Colombian President Gustavo Petro will host a summit next week that seeks to advance negotiations between the Venezuelan government and opposition. The head of state has proposed a formula: “more democracy, less sanctions”he said this week in Washington during a visit to the United States.

At the meeting in Bogotá, which starts on tuesday april 25instead of delegates from the government of Nicolás Maduro and the Unitary Platform that opposes him, representatives of 15 countries will participate, including the US, which has imposed most of the more than 900 sanctions that weigh on Venezuelan institutions and officials.

This Thursday, at the White House in Washington, Petro explained to President Joe Biden his three-point plan: “to promote the Venezuelan electoral schedule, the entry of Venezuela into the Inter-American Human Rights System and progressively deactivate the sanctions.”

But Petro’s formula for more democracy and zero sanctions touches both sides of the conflict in Venezuela differently.

Maduro made his position clear after a meeting with Petro in March: the summit should be useful for him “to turn the page on this tortuous period of sanctions.” His foreign ministry reacted positively to Petro’s recipe to unblock the dialogue, but conditioned his success on first having all sanctions annulled, which he called “unilateral coercive measures.”

Also read: Venezuela conditions political dialogue with the opposition to the lifting of sanctions

Some in the opposition differ, saying the sanctions are the result of years of human rights violations and Chavismo’s breakdown of the constitutional order in Venezuela. There must first be democracy to lift sanctions, said opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who was recognized by 50 governments until January as Venezuela’s interim president and now a presidential candidate for one of the four main parties.

The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, does not apply in the crisis in Venezuela, said Roberto Enríquez, leader of the Copei Social Christian party and one of the nine opposition delegates for the negotiations carried out by the government and the opposition in Mexico City, a process facilitated by the Kingdom of Norway.

“The signals that Maduro must send is that everything that separated Venezuela from the Constitution and the democratic order must be reversed,” Enríquez told the voice of america. “It’s not the other way around.”

Progressing towards a “democratic reindictment” is what should lead to an end to economic sanctions, he added.

The opposition denounces a progressive erosion of democracy, disrespect for the Constitution and the violation of fundamental rights by the government since the days of former President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez’s attempt to impose constitutional reforms through decrees and enabling laws, despite having lost a consultative referendum on those modifications in 2007, escalated the reproach of his government policies.

The opposition denounced that Chávez, first, and Maduro after his death in 2013, undermined the independence of public powers, imposed electoral authoritarianism and promoted a political majority among magistrates and judges.

They also accuse them of undermining freedom of the press and expression, persecuting critical politicians and soldiers, and politicizing the armed forces. In the same way, they are pointed out for promoting a centralist model where the administrative, political and economic decisions of the country depend only on the Chavista hierarchs, and for promoting attacks against dissidents.

Maduro annulled Parliament in 2015 after opponents won elections, and called a National Constituent Assembly without putting the idea to a referendum in 2017.

The opposition denounced that on January 10, 2019, Maduro usurped power by taking the oath for a second term after having won a “fraudulent” and “unconstitutional” election, called by the pro-government Constituent Assembly.

Political persecution and the violation of human rights in Venezuela have also been reflected in dozens of cases in United Nations reports. These testimonies allowed the opening of an investigation by the International Criminal Court into crimes against humanity in November 2021.

The opposition points out among the violations the repression of protests against the government in 2014; the election of another Parliament without the previous one being able to exercise its real power in 2020; the selection of an official majority among the rectors of the Electoral Council in 2021, and the appointment of Chavista politicians and soldiers as magistrates in 2022.

More sanctions since 2017

The United States first applied sanctions against Venezuelan officials in September 2008, during Chávez’s second term, when it froze the assets and bank accounts of former Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín; the director of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Hugo Carvajal, and the former intelligence chief, Henry Rangel Silva, for his alleged support for the FARC guerrillas.

In 2015, under President Barack Obama, new individual sanctions arrived, a few months after the violent repression of the 2014 protests.

Although there were then some restrictions on exports of products for military purposes to Venezuela, it was in August 2017 when the US sanctions were applied against institutions, financial operations and state companies, including PDVSA.

In the following years, former President Donald Trump applied limitations and prohibitions on economic activities related to the debts, gold, currencies, shareholding, banking, mining, airlines and oil operations of the Venezuelan State.

According to Chavismo, these sanctions constitute a “blockade” guilty of the economic crisis, despite the fact that economists point out that the drop in gross domestic product began since Maduro took office in 2013, before the sanctions.

The US has indicated that the easing of these sanctions is tied to the fruit of political negotiations between the government and the opposition.

Last November, the administration of President Joe Biden eased restrictions on the operations of the Chevron oil company in Venezuela, hours after talks resumed in Mexico City.

Since then, there has been no new meeting between the two parties and no progress.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the voice of america for this report.

The Bogotá summit seems like an attempt to unfreeze the negotiation, while time is ticking for next year’s presidential elections and the opposition primaries in October this year, he told the voice of america former Venezuelan ambassador to Guyana and political analyst Sadio Garavini.

Efforts to reactivate the dialogue also took place in a meeting in France hosted by President Emmanuel Macron, during the tour of US national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Brazil and Colombia, and visits to the White House by presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, Garavini stressed.

According to Enríquez, the negotiating delegate for the opposition Copei party, fantasizing about an express agreement and the end of sanctions and the redemocratization of Venezuela would be “irresponsible,” and he prefers to speak of “graduality” and “changes in stages.”

Guaidó said Thursday on Twitter that Petro should help specify a date for the presidential elections, the release of political prisoners and freedom of the press.

Guaidó did not respond to a request for comment from the voice of america for this report.

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