For Luis Vicente León, President Maduro said that there will be elections with the objective of the United States removing the sanctions.
On Saturday -March 11- Nicolás Maduro said that there will be presidential elections in 2024 “in peace and democracy.”
And in the opinion of the president of Datanálisis, Luis Vicente León, this is done by the pro-government leader to advance in the lifting of sanctions.
«In 2024 the presidential elections will come- The people will vote, elect and, on January 10, 2025, the president-elect will be sworn in and will follow the course of our country, in peace, in democracy, with popular leadership. What imperialism, the right wing or Europe thinks of the Venezuelan democratic process is worth a half”,
expressed in an interview with the Spanish economist Alfredo Serrano, which was broadcast on VTV.
Luis Vicente León, assured that Maduro’s statements are a sign.
“He has just announced that the election will take place on the constitutional date, which is a prerequisite for giving scope to continue the negotiations to ease sanctions.”
And he added: Without that, none of the international actors would have room to continue advancing and Maduro has already defined it.
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However, he ruled out that this has anything to do with competitive elections in Venezuela.
“That will not happen, but they can improve conditions and give oxygen to the opposition, which is extremely weakened today. The game is difficult, tangled and full of noise. But it’s not stopped.”
In this sense, he referred to the role of the democratic opposition, but also of the US.
“Biden’s representative announced that negotiations can continue on the issue of Álex Saab, albeit slowly, and the parties -Plataforma Unitaria and Maduro’s delegation- continue to seek a solution to the blockers for the use of frozen resources, with the UN as an ally . This indicates that the US also continues to be active in the search for solutions and trying to achieve advance mechanisms in the future, despite the fact that it knows that a competitive election like the one proposed by Maduro is not going to happen.
Mexico is still stagnant, but not the negotiations
The political analyst emphasized that there is not much new that can be said about the state of the negotiation between the Executive and the democratic opposition.
“It seems evident that, at this moment, Mexico is frozen and that makes the parties establish increasingly bitter positions publicly. For the Government of Venezuela, the commitments acquired in the previous negotiations have not been fulfilled.
In this order of ideas, he revealed that the US has a different vision, because the Biden Administration perceives that Nicolás Maduro has only received concessions (especially oil) and has not delivered anything political in exchange, which they consider the fundamental commitment.
“They feel that without progress on this level, there is no room for negotiations and they have frozen any other assignment on their part in the central issue that is oil and gas, where there are a large number of interests from Europe and the rest of the world, who feel discriminated against by the focused license in which they do not participate and seek its homologation”.
For all this, Mexico remains on standby and the parties begin to show their positions of pressure: the US says that it will not advance further in easing without receiving political advances in return.
And the Maduro government declared that it will not cede political conditions and continue negotiating with the opposition until the US does not remove the sanctions.
According to León, there is a negotiation on political prisoners and other aspects that include even the possibility of talking about the exchange of Álex Saab when his trial has advanced, which of course would include another part of Maduro’s transfer.
Likewise, he affirmed that the opposition and the Government are negotiating electoral conditions and from there will come some issues that Europe and Latin America consider key, such as some qualification of a candidate and the formation of the CNE.
The not possible scenarios
1) “It is not true that the Venezuelan government will go to a purely democratic and transparent election, no matter what they offer in return.
The most that it will allow are advances that improve political conditions, as long as its preservation in power is guaranteed, and much more without negotiating the reduction of exit costs, which today are infinite.
But that he is not looking for, because he does not have the slightest intention of leaving.
2) It is not possible for the US to relieve the government of general and personal sanctions.
The best thing is that some flexibility can be negotiated tied to some concrete advances in politics, which by the way, Europe and Latin America are more likely to achieve than the US itself.
3) The demand for the release of sanctions as a phase prior to political negotiation is simply a position of pressure from the Venezuelan government.
But not something that can happen or that actually limits partial advances, many of which have already happened in the past.
León added that in the midst of this “aubergine” we must try to separate the noise from the signals and understand what is in the “heart” of the statements of both parties and not in the “seasoning” they use to pressure and minimize the internal costs in their own groups.
“Maduro attacked imperialism and said that he did not care what others thought, nothing new but obviously if he does care, then if not, he would not be negotiating, even if it was slow and difficult. That’s the noise.”