2023-05-01 15:28:01
e affirms the need to (1) establish a schedule that allows the holding of free, transparent and guaranteed elections; (2) that what was agreed go hand in hand with the lifting of sanctions; and (3) that the negotiation be accompanied by the acceleration of the implementation of the single trust fund for social investment in Venezuela.
So says the very brief final statement of the call Bogota Summit, formally “International Conference on the Political Process in Venezuela.” It could have been the declaration of any of the previous “summits”; for example, in the Dominican Republic, Norway and Barbados, among others. And with the same vagueness, a question of “necessity” instead of a list of conditions, concrete tasks, concessions and deadlines so that said elections with guarantees are guaranteed. The redundancy is intentional.
What is new and really important is that, with the US government at the table, point 2 introduces the question of lifting sanctions, while point 3 takes the first step towards it. It’s basic: The creation of a trust fund first requires the unfreezing of the financial resources included in the sanctions regime, precisely by the United States.
Bingo! They must have shouted in Miraflores. There are no clear political commitments or defined concrete steps, but the language goes in that direction; It always starts with the narrative. The title of this column, the clause in parentheses, also goes in that direction: The pompous international conference has been less to democratize Venezuela than to eliminate the sanctions that weigh on the dictatorship that governs Venezuela.
It’s not accidental Only two things hurt Maduro: the sanctions and the investigation of the International Criminal Court; which indicates the effectiveness of both strategies. The week before the summit, Maduro vociferated that they “return” London’s gold and CITGO’s 3.2 billion, paralyzed by sanctions, as a condition to negotiate the elections. Jorge Rodríguez, meanwhile, “demanded” an immediate suspension of the investigation for crimes against humanity carried out by the Court’s Prosecutor’s Office.
So much prior vehemence devalued the event, which is why the level of most of the envoys was lower than what the Colombian government expected. Petro should know that Maduro is “radioactive”, he has no friends or allies, only accomplices. In addition, the expulsion of Guaidó from Colombia did not help the image of his government. He, at least, was not sent to Venezuela and handed over to SEBIN, as was the case with Lorent Saleh in 2014.
You don’t have to have a crystal ball to know that removing sanctions without first extracting tangible concessions will only serve to give Maduro oxygen and, once again, prolong his stay in power. This would also allow the regime to continue looting the Venezuelan people and state. The persecutions between corrupt factions that accuse each other of corruption, and for amounts that are measured in GDP points rather than figures full of zeros, is a definition of the magnitude of the looting. Tareck El Aissami is still on the run, precisely.
Does anyone think that the regime would use the resources of the trust fund to feed, heal, educate and create jobs to reverse the exodus? Rodríguez’s demand is even more absurd, international justice acts independently, a concept alien to Chavista Venezuela. That is why power is the only possible amnesty. Precisely, they should be informed that, in Argentina and Uruguay, for example, legal proceedings are still taking place today for crimes against humanity from the 1970s. The same in several ex-communist European countries.
Here is a prior concession that no one at the Bogotá Summit seems to have cared about: If you are serious about free, transparent and guaranteed elections, release the political prisoners right now. But it’s not serious, we all know it. For the Maduro dictatorship, power is the only possible amnesty because it is the certainty of his impunity.
If they are also going to receive the resources today under sanctions, the international community will not be doing anything other than financing said impunity.
*Originally posted on Infobe
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