Will the Venezuelan Opposition Manage to Stay on its Feet?

By Misión Verdad – Oct 29, 2024

The internal fracture that the main factions of the anti-Chavista opposition are going through shows a deep decomposition in their ranks and an increasingly pronounced leadership vacuum. The departure from the country of Edmundo González Urrutia, added to the decline of María Corina Machado, her distancing from the public stage, and her confinement to social media networks, exacerbates this situation of fragmentation.

In the midst of such political inertia, Henrique Capriles, in an interview for Tal Cual published on October 27, pointed out how the error committed with the false government of Juan Guaidó is being repeated.

His accusations occur in a context of tensions with Julio Borges and other sectors of Justice First, the party of which he recently requested to resign from the national leadership.

The former governor of Miranda state placed the internal crisis of his organization as a reflection of another broader crisis of the opposition in general. In his words, he pointed out:

“It is precisely that a group intends to lead us to a political vision that is not of the majority. We already had a first scenario of a failure, also thunderous, which was the interim government of 2019; I imagine that now the same sector has the same thing on its agenda in 2025. And why do we have to agree?”.

The groups affiliated with the “until the end” narrative of the leader of Vente Venezuela question the electoral route that Capriles is leaning towards, which implies entering into a process of political dialogue with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

In response to what he calls a “dirty war” against him, Capriles let slip evidence that validates what has been the mode of operating from the beginning of the extremist opposition leadership: the sabotage of the resolution of conflicts through institutional means, and the choice, instead, of mechanisms of destabilization—in this case, of direct aggression against the population through sanctions.

“Julio Borges’ policy for a few years has not been precisely the elections. You just have to look at the facts to realize it,” said Capriles, referring to the promotion of abstentionism in the 2018 presidential elections, within the framework of an international campaign to request unilateral coercive measures against the country.

“They are those who believe in the theory of maximum pressure, accompanied by sanctions against Venezuelans,” he said.

In his opinion, which can easily go beyond Borges to include figures such as Machado, Capriles maintains that electoral participation in 2024 occurred “reluctantly, due to simple circumstance.”

This, as the facts show, was nothing more than a maneuver to generate, in parallel, a scenario of non-recognition of the electoral results and the carrying out of violent actions with the aim of producing, once again, a change of regime by force.

At another crucial point in the interview, Capriles, seeking to blame his detractors for the failure of political dialogue, admitted that Operation Guaidó was in the making since 2017. He points to Julio Borges’ boycott of the negotiating table in the Dominican Republic as evidence.

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“What happened in the 2017 negotiation?” Capriles asked. “Was it a plan for us not to go to the elections in 2018, because the interim government of 2019 was being formed? In the end, you are not honest, and you do not tell people that you do not believe in elections but that you believe in another plan, that you have another plan.”

Without explicitly naming María Corina Machado, he criticized her attempt to impose a hegemonic leadership and the manner in which she has led the opposition to its current stagnation.

“There are people who don’t like that I don’t repeat slogans, because slogans for me are a campaign issue, they are not a strategy…” said Capriles. “That you tell me the answer to what to do in a scenario like this is a slogan, or your answer is disqualification, I think, and does little to help in the search for a solution.”

He also exposed her as a promoter of a scenario of political violence, emphasizing that the solution must be “democratic, not a war.”

Capriles represents a political group, opposed to the leader of Vente Venezuela, which also includes Henry Ramos Allup and Manuel Rosales. These opposition leaders predict a debacle for the opposition leadership on January 10, when President Maduro is sworn in for the 2025-2031 presidential term in the National Assembly.

“You have to go through all the scenarios,” said Capriles, the leader of Justice First. “But to build all the scenarios, because what must be avoided at all costs is a new frustration of the country.”

Given this landscape, the most sensible decision for this sector would be to establish a dialogue with the government and participate in an electoral process that allows it to regain strength.

At a time when its options are limited and its existence is threatened, if the experience of the failed interim government of Guaidó is repeated, the search for a new strategy that will allow them to move away from the path of María Corina and Edmundo González seems inevitable.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/KW/SL