A Suspicious Mediation

By Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity (REDH) Argentina chapter – Aug 15, 2024

Presidents Petro and Lula propose an unusual “transitional cohabitation government and new free elections” in Venezuela to calm their incomprehensible impatience to know the definitive results of the presidential election. Both waited two and a half months to learn the definitive result of the presidential election in Mexico due to the challenge filed by Xóchitl Gálvez on behalf of that country’s right wing. So, what is wrong with them now? Why can they not wait for the deadlines established by law, which grant Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) up to 30 days after the election to announce the definitive results?

Furthermore, due to the media campaign of the fascist right wing and the provocative proclamation of Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of the elections, the issue had to be taken to court and now lies before the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, which has all the records submitted by the CNE and the political organizations. We have to wait for the court to announce its decision.

Mexico’s Lopez Obrador: We Will Wait for Ruling of Venezuela’s Supreme Court

The proposal of the two presidents is offensive because it takes for granted that there was fraud in the Venezuelan elections, which is an irresponsible and unjust accusation that is not by chance fully aligned with Washington’s project. US President Joe Biden has already expressed his support for both presidents’ proposals and supports holding new elections in Venezuela, a maneuver that implies the denial of President Nicolás Maduro’s legitimacy and opens the doors to a Guaidó 2.0 in a “transitional government.” Thus, it aims to achieve the desired “regime change” in Venezuela, a necessary step to definitively seize the largest oil reserve in the world.

Moreover, a government of cohabitation? What would that look like? Why did Lula not propose it when Jair Bolsonaro’s hordes took Brasília by storm, claiming that the election had been stolen from them? He did not do so for very good reasons, the same ones he now forgets when he demands a “transitional government and new elections” in Venezuela. In the same vein, why does Petro not invite Álvaro Uribe Vélez to share the government and thus achieve the delayed pacification of Colombia? To illustrate the merits of his proposal, the Colombian president invokes the experience of the National Front (1958-1974), the pact between conservatives and liberals that precisely gave rise to the armed struggle and violence in Colombia. Both Lula and Petro should know that a coalition government between a neocolonial, destructive fascism and the Chavista forces would be nonsense, an unnatural exercise, as our ancestors used to say, whose outcome, as history teaches us, would be none other than a civil war, something that no one would wish for the much harassed and attacked Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. That is why, in a gesture that distinguishes him as a statesman, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said that he will wait for the final verdict of the Venezuelan judicial authorities before making a decision.

(Cuba en Resumen)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SF