2024-01-23 04:30:00
For a month now, the Venezuelan Government has had the ball in its court, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). The country’s prolonged political crisis – in which the international community has mediated to lead it towards elections with guarantees – is once once more facing a decisive year. And it will be as long as President Nicolás Maduro allows. The last steps in the negotiation between Chavismo and the United States, within the framework of the agreements reached with the opposition in Barbados, led María Corina Machado to present a claim before the judicial instance for a de facto disqualification for an alleged irregularity with little legal background.
In recent years, Chavismo has stopped all competition in elections precisely by using its judicial arm. On December 15, the deadline to process appeals for disqualifications expired. That day, Machado went to the Supreme Court. The Christmas break, the election of a new board of directors in the court and a closure due to inventory of cases until further notice have served the Political-Administrative Chamber of the TSJ to delay a response that keeps a large part of the country on tenterhooks and, at the same time, denying access to the file to the leader’s lawyers.
Last week, the new president of the highest judicial body in Venezuela, Caryslia Rodríguez, was appointed. The judge is not only an open militant of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV); She was also a councilor of that formation and belongs to the close environment of the first lady, Cilia Flores. In addition, she presides over the Electoral Chamber that ordered the suspension of the opposition primaries in which Machado was elected with 92% of the votes, a week following they were held. In her appointment speech, the new president of the TSJ urged the justices to “achieve great victories as required by this stellar moment in the country’s history.”
The Chavista apparatus faces, with these premises, a great dilemma. The negotiation with the opposition has proposed a compromise between granting democratic guarantees in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions to expand Caracas’s room for financial maneuver. In the middle of that crossroads is Machado. The Venezuelan crisis has entered a quagmire with two extreme scenarios. The first is to give the green light for her participation as an opposition candidate, fulfilling the word pledged in the Barbados agreements. And the second, block his way once more with the costs that this implies in the dialogue that the Maduro Government has achieved with the United States.
The decision, in weeks
The decision should be announced in the coming weeks. “It is expected that the decision will be made within the month of January, since the deadline has not expired. But the delays show a certain level of dilemma for the Government. Answer that you cannot end the negotiation, and evidently you are interested in getting everything you can get out of it. [los acuerdos con EE UU]”says Benigno Alarcón, director of the Center for Political and Government Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University.
Set the date of the election – which according to the Barbados agreements should be in the second half of this year -, a schedule on which to draw a route to advance in other aspects such as the registration of new voters or the request for electoral observation , is a request that is reiterated from different sectors. “We demand the call with the date of the presidential election, to which we will go with our candidate, María Corina Machado, who represents that change that all Venezuelans want,” said in a statement this week the Unitary Platform, which brings together the largest coalition opposition of the country.
The Government has also delayed this response. How competitive the 2024 elections will be, if they occur, is a matter that has yet to be defined. “The election will be as open as possible and as closed as the Government needs,” says Alarcón. “Chavismo is now in a very disadvantageous situation. If he says no to Machado’s participation, he would have to go to an election that the international community would not recognize, in which he would maintain power but would not regain legitimacy, so what he can do is play with the timing of the election. If he says that he can participate, he is at risk of losing power because the country demands a change.” In the most recent opinion polls, at the end of 2023, 85% of Venezuelans demanded a new Government and in this group 40% declare their Chavista affiliation.
Between the two extreme scenarios there is also an intermediate point. It consists of achieving certain conditions such as electoral observation or complying with recommendations given by the European Union during its participation in the 2021 regional and local elections. And at the same time, imposing a block on Machado’s career that forces us to think regarding a substitute and thus fueling division and internal competition in the opposition ranks. United States politics, which in a year of presidential campaign and elections, is a key factor. In April, following six months of licenses, the relaxation of the sanctions with which a group of oil companies have approached to talk with the Government to resume projects with PDVSA should be reviewed once more. But the migration of Venezuelans has also entered the discussion with Washington. Along with the licenses and the exchange of prisoners, deportation flights for undocumented Venezuelans from the United States were also activated.
Even so, in the midst of uncertainty, Maduro has accused the opposition of preparing alleged “terrorist” attacks and last week he asked to activate the so-called “Bolivarian fury” throughout the country, a plan in which civilians, military and police will have the task of combating any action that they consider destabilizing once morest the Government. Meanwhile, Machado has begun to create his campaign teams and continues to mobilize around the country as if assuming that he will be able to compete.
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