Edmundo González issues a statement to the press. Photo: ABC.
Misión Verdad – 7 Jan, 2025
On January 3, the former presidential candidate from the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González, began a tour of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Panama, and the United States.
Last September, he asked for asylum from the Spanish government and subsequently fled there after a negotiation with the Venezuelan government that completely dynamited his credibility. His visit to these countries, where he has been received as a supposed “president-elect,” has as its fundamental objective to position, once again, the Venezuelan question on the regional scene, in view of the imminent rise of Donald Trump to the White House, relying on the governments most aligned with Washington’s foreign policy on the continent.
Faced with in an inability to mobilize people within Venezuela in the second half of 2024 and with a weakening of the “fraud” narrative at the international level, the extremist sector of the opposition, led by María Corina Machado and González, has seen its room for maneuver reduced. Edmundo’s tour responds to that urgent impulse, which orbits, with a manufactured apocalyptic tone, around January 10, the date scheduled for the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro.
Putting Edmundo on the road has been the last available strategy (and not for that reason the most desirable, given that the physical condition of the former diplomat is costly in terms of public relations) to raise spirits, restore expectations, and try to regain the initiative because beyond the inauguration as a political fact, the extremist sector is completely risking its place as leader of the fragmented opposition.
In Argentina, González was received by President Javier Milei, who introduced him on the balcony of the Casa Rosada and declared that “we are doing what the cause of freedom requires, no more and no less.”
It should be noted that the allegedly libertarian government of Argentina has been involved in conspiratorial plots against Venezuela ranging from the use of its embassy in Caracas as a base for the coordination of violent plans to the sending of spies such as the gendarme Nahuel Gallo.
Gallo was arrested upon entering Venezuela at the border crossing between Cúcuta and Ureña, and the Venezuelan authorities reported that “he came to fulfill a mission,” which was demonstrated by contradictions regarding the purpose of his trip to Venezuela and by the staunch defense that he received from Milei and his cabinet.
From Argentina, González continued to Uruguay, where he met with the outgoing president, Luis Lacalle Pou. As in the meeting with Milei, González provided him a gift of a supposed electoral certificate framed as a symbol of his “struggle.”
His “visit” to Paraguay on Sunday, January 5, was reduced to a video call in which the president of that country, Santiago Peña, ratified his recognition of González as the supposed winner of the elections last July in Venezuela. This motivated the severing of diplomatic relations and expulsion of the Paraguayan diplomatic personnel by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry on Monday, January 6.
The media have announced that González’s trip will continue to Panama and the Dominican Republic, and he will also be accompanied by at least nine former presidents of the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas group (IDEA Group) made up of right-wing leaders such as Mireya Moscoso and Ernesto Pérez-Balladares from Panama, Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox from Mexico, Mario Abdo from Paraguay, Jorge Quiroga from Bolivia, and Jamil Mahuad from Ecuador.
This group tried to enter Venezuela without invitation or accreditation to attend the July 28 elections as “electoral observers.” When they were refused entry, they made a scene at the Panama airport that amounted to nothing. This is a group of discredited politicians who seek media relevance and financing, within the framework of the circular economy of regime change against Venezuela.
Syria: Maaloula – People Who Speak the Language of Jesus Christ Under Siege Again
Biden “accompanies him from the heart”
On Monday, January 6, González tried to cause a media stir with his visit to the White House. Upon leaving the presidential compound, where he met with Joe Biden, also the outgoing president, González declared that the US president “accompanies him from the heart” in his attempt to return to Venezuela for the inauguration on January 10.
According to the former diplomat, they discussed “various aspects of the bilateral relationship” and González thanked Biden for the “support” received from the United States government “in this fight for the democratic recovery of Venezuela.”
He was accompanied by Miguel Pizarro, leader of Justice First, involved in the death of a minor whom he encouraged to participate in acts of street violence in 2017, as well as by David Smolansky, former mayor from the Popular Will party who is a fugitive from Venezuelan justice for contempt of the Supreme Court and who is accused of leading a human trafficking network based on the commercial exploitation of Venezuelan migration.
González later met with the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, who has been part of the attempts to intervene in Venezuelan internal politics and who openly participated in the coup d’état carried out in Bolivia after the 2019 elections. González also established contact with the Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, who holds office after the dismissal of Pedro Castillo and whose government carried out at least two massacres between December 2022 and February 2023.
It’s all about Trump and destabilization
When asked in Washington about a possible meeting with the US president-elect, Donald Trump, González did not confirm whether it was in his plans. However, he declared that relations with the new administration will be “very, very close and also very beneficial for Venezuela.”
The impact of the intended international campaign does not seem to be what was expected when meeting with two outgoing presidents and via video call with another of his “hosts.” The meeting with Milei deserves special mention. Milei is not going through his best moment in terms of regional influence due to the disastrous management of his diplomatic relations.
Opposition analysts agree that the underlying objective of this trip is to sustain the attempt to mobilize sanctions and attacks on Venezuela. The goal is to seek an “alignment” of the countries of the region around an eventual reissue of the “maximum pressure” strategy led by the United States to take advantage of Trump’s return to power on January 20.
This strategy, aimed at achieving regime change in Venezuela, failed during Trump’s previous administration. Although the incoming president’s plan is not fully known, it is clear that the outgoing president’s objectives also failed, so expectations remain open as to how the United States will approach the bilateral political game starting January 20.
González’s journey and contacts also figure as a mechanism to encourage mobilization within Venezuela, whose discouragement was widely demonstrated in the last calls by Vente Venezela‘s María Corina Machado.
As the number of opponents at opposition rallies decreased, the level of violence and frustration of the Vente Venezela coordinator in her announcements through social networks increased, as did the evidence of a violent plan through seizures and arrests by the security forces.
In this sense, the logic of subordination to Washington remains intact in the sector that Machado and González bring together, as well as in their regional allies, which could foreshadow a remake of the extinct Lima Group.
Edmundo’s tour and the statements, both from governments and the OAS, seek to inject strength and make visible in the media the day of protests that Machado has called for on next January 9, which have been raised from a confrontational and violent approach, with the objective that an eventual scenario of chaos allows the bureaucratic routine of regime change to be restarted: destabilization and acts of violence, which then lead to an intensification of sanctions and threats of using force to undermine Venezuela’s national sovereignty.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
