The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will begin a round of consultations with various national sectors to “reformat” the dialogue on the political and economic crisis in that country, the head of the official delegation for that process, Jorge Rodríguez, announced on Tuesday.
The president of the National Assembly and highest representative of Maduro in the Mexico City dialogue, suspended last octoberdetailed that Chavismo will begin consultations with businessmen, parties, workers, students and civil society to “reformat” those conversations.
Rodríguez led an extraordinary meeting of the Commission for Peace, Dialogue and Reconciliation at the Federal Legislative Palace in Caracas on Tuesday afternoon. Then he called for “an inclusive dialogue.”
According to the official leader, the Maduro government will seek a dialogue where “we can all be represented” and that reflects “the political map” of Venezuela, which, in his opinion, changed after the 2020 and 2021 elections.
The Venezuelan opposition considers the parliamentary vote of December 2020 as illegitimate, but a considerable sector of it decided to participate in the regional elections last November.
Chavismo won most of the governorships and mayoralties in those elections, although suffered symbolic defeats in states like Barinas, where the family of former President Chávez governed for 23 years.
“The quality of the dialogue is different. It would allow us to see into the future.”
Rodríguez, one of the politicians closest to Maduro, specified that the ruling party considers that the new phase of the dialogue should include “the different sectors of the opposition” that participated in those votes last year.
“Who decides which are the sectors of the opposition that participate? Everyone has the right to participate”, he told the press in the Venezuelan capital.
According to Rodríguez, there will be an “intensive round” of consultations and meetings with factors from the Venezuelan opposition, which will begin with a meeting with Gerardo Blyde, chief delegate of the unitary platform in Mexico.
He also detailed that the meetings will include the highest organization of the business association, Fedecamaras, and “all the political parties” of the opposition, mentioning leaders that the opposition that does not know Maduro as president qualifies as “scorpions” and “traitors” to his democratic cause.
The dialogue in Mexico began in August 2021 with the facilitation of Norway, the accompaniment of Russia and the Netherlands, and the participation of two delegations of nine members each from Chavismo and its opponents.
That process was paralyzed in mid-October. The Madurista government announced its withdrawal from the negotiations in protest at the “kidnapping” in the United States of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, whom Caracas identifies as your special envoy diplomat and member of its delegation in Mexico.
Change of formate?
The president of the Parliament elected in 2020 valued that the new stage of the dialogue on Venezuela must identify that the country “is at peace” and that its conditions of social conflict “have changed” in recent months.
He considered that the 2017 negotiations in the Dominican Republic, and 2019 in Oslo and Barbados, took place “under an umbrella of political conflict.”
“We are not asking for capitulations from anyone,” said Rodríguez, convinced that the meetings with Venezuelan sectors will show that the country has “other expectations than those raised by political factors.”
The main demand of the Venezuelan opposition is that there be conditions to hold new reliable presidential and parliamentary elections in the country.
The madurismo insists, for its part, that economic sanctions against its institutions and main industries be totally suspended.
Rodríguez quoted the words of President Maduro last Monday to reaffirm that it is necessary to “reformat” the dialogue on Venezuela. He did not specify whether this new stage of negotiations would take place under the Mexican format.
“Now a meeting process begins. After that round of talks, then we will be able to tell you what that dialogue format is,” he told reporters.
Regarding whether Maduro’s meeting with a United States delegation included the lifting of sanctions exclusively on the US company Chevron or on the entire oil industry, he said that “there are things that, when they are in full development, it is better to wait for them to be established by yes alone”.
The official spokesman reiterated that Alex Saab, extradited in October 2021 from Cape Verde to the United States, “he is a full member of the delegation” of the Maduro government in Mexico, which, in his opinion, suffered a “kidnapping.”
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