By Luis
Manuel Aguana
For those
who may have been confused with the title of this article, I am not referring
to the negotiations that are now trying to carry out with the regime the
factors that have been enemies of getting us out of this nightmare but of
living with it. Once again Rodríguez Zapatero, now renewed with the help of the
new Spanish socialist government, has returned to try to convince the
international community, starting with the European Union, that the Venezuelan
solution will pass because Maduro will remain in a negotiated manner with the
official opposition. Now it is not only Rodríguez Zapatero but the Spanish
government itself, when its Chancellor says that "it is not opportune to
investigate the crimes against humanity in Venezuela because that could negatively
affect the possibility of a negotiated solution to the conflict". What a horror! (see in Spanish https://twitter.com/Gbastidas/status/1052546230222540800). And on top of that they also take care of
Lorent Saleh, now turned into a goodwill card of the tyranny of Maduro. Never
before had a liberation had so much compromise stench.
I refer with the title to how to negotiate the delivery of a country of the world's largest hostage kidnapping situation which it is a victim (see Venezuela: the world's largest hostage kidnapping situation, at https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_85.html). In a whole country subject to a hostage kidnapping situation, as in our country, the magnitudes are different from those involved in a common hostage kidnapping case. In the case of a country, the magnitudes involved change the actors, but not the situation. Let's see.
According
to security specialists, hostage kidnapping has three stages (see in Spanish
Etapas en una situación de rehenes, en http://segured.com/etapas-en-la-situacion-de-rehenes/) which can be summarized as
follows, taking them to our country: a) a mafia of criminals managed to take
over the government and kidnapped people and property; b) negotiation with the
kidnappers to avoid a minimum of harm to the hostages "by framing them in a mental attitude favorable to the peaceful
solution" listening to their demands; c) pressure for the outcome (he
takes me or I take him, Carlos Vives dixit).
Although
in the terminology of specialists a kidnapping is not the same as a
hostage-taking (see in Spanish http://segured.com/diferencias-entre-el-secuestro-y-la-toma-de-rehenes/), in practice historically has
referred as such to this crime that comes from another: “From the point of view of police science, one must learn to
distinguish between hostage-taking, hostage situation, robbery with hostages
and kidnapping itself. When news reports around the world announced how a
subversive group had stormed the Japanese embassy in the city of Lima, Peru,
they often referred to the event as a kidnapping, when in fact it was a
hostage-taking for political purposes. The place of confinement was clearly
defined, in the eyes of the authorities, and the petitions were political in
nature”.
In Venezuela in one way or another we are all hostages, active or
potential. The assets are those that are already in the dungeons of the regime,
and the rest of us are potential because we all have a number that can make the
regime effective at will if it is affected in any way by someone else's
permanence in power. That is why we affirm our hostage situation in our own country.
Moreover, if we are not victims of the regime's security forces, we are victims
of the gangs controlled in some way by the regime. On the other hand,
Venezuela's resources are also under the disposition power of those who have
made them by the force of the Republic's weapons, and not by the democratic
consent of Venezuelans. That clearly defines our hostage situation.
Bearing in
mind then that: a) we are kidnapped in our own country by a heavily armed
group; b) the population is not in a position to oppose this situation under
penalty of torture and death; c) some groups negotiate "opposition"
privileges, collaborating so that the hostage situation continues with a
democratic disguise before the world, in exchange for cohabitation and negotiation
of spaces for crumbs of power; d) the regime is preparing to change the
constitution through kidnapped electoral mechanisms, in order to consolidate
and legitimize this kidnapping situation in a "legal" and
"constitutional" way, so Venezuela needs an urgent outcome of this
hostage situation (to reach stage 3), but this defined in these terms has not
even begun stage 2. In other words, despite the consummation of a kidnapping of
persons and property, the remaining two stages of a hostage situation have not
yet begun.
Let's do a
hypothetical exercise. If the second
stage were to begin, that is, the negotiation for the liberation of Venezuela,
who would be the "police negotiator," with enough external dissuasive
power to change the situation, and who would be the spokespersons for the
kidnappers? What would the kidnappers ask for? On what basis would the
"police negotiator" negotiate?
There are
no previous experiences in the world that match the Venezuelan situation.
Although the regime hides behind communist ideology as the basis for its
outrages, basically what we are perceiving here is a criminal business with
planetary ramifications. The drug business and all its derivatives, such as
money laundering on a world scale, which is added to the financing and export
of terrorism, make our country an extraordinary enclave for all groups that
wish to break the established democratic order of the West. Nothing less. This cannot be a tolerable
situation for the international community in the hemisphere.
Given this
extremely complex situation, the international community in the hemisphere must
directly assume this problem and immediately establish a negotiating team to
act as "police negotiator," with sufficient power and dissuasive
force to subdue the kidnappers. What would be negotiated here? A mechanism for
the establishment of an Emergency Government in Venezuela that puts an end to
the hostage situation of its inhabitants.
With whom would that be negotiated? With Nicolas Maduro and his close
circle? I don't think so. That should be negotiated directly with those who
really have the power that sustains the state of things in Venezuela, starting
with the countries that give them international support - including Cuba - and
the military that sustain the regime. Do you think this proposal is illusory or
scandalous? That negotiation would save the Venezuelan people many lives and
pain. The size of the continental problem that Venezuela is causing escapes any
magnitude that has occurred in the past and deserves creative solutions of the
same caliber.
And how
would that Emergency Government be arrived at? Going to any election with the
CNE as proposed by the collaborators? If it weren't so serious, it would be
laughable. It is not possible at this moment to have any institution in the
country, particularly the electoral one, because they are completely corrupted
in the eagerness of the regime to remain in power; that is why it is necessary
to go to a scheme of supra-national electoral technical support that comes from
the hand of international organizations as guarantors of the transition, all
this supported by Venezuelan civil society. This would be a fundamental
component to be contributed by the negotiating team. It is necessary to
reconstruct absolutely the entire institutional apparatus of the State,
resorting to the very basis of all democracy: popular sovereignty.
This
negotiating team must demand that the kidnappers in Venezuela allow the popular
expression in their primary conception and that they submit to its opinion.
What do you think the criminals who hold power would ask for back? The same
thing Chávez asked the military on April 11, 2002: guarantees for his life and
that of his family, with the security of not being prosecuted. Whether they are
given them or not will depend on the force imposed on the negotiation.
Until
now, the International Community has done what the protocol that governs a
conventional dictatorship has dictated, sanctioning its protagonists, but this
has not been enough. The sanctioned perpetrators have entrenched themselves in
the country doing more harm to the population. I think we are already late to
enter the second stage of the hostage situation. But who should take the
initiative to start? Definitely the initiative must come from outside, and
before thinking about sanctions to the country as suggested by former Ambassador
William Brownfield (see in Spanish El Impulso https://www.elimpulso.com/blog/2018/10/17/exembajador-de-ee-uu-da-sugerencias-ante-la-situacion-economica-en-venezuela-17oct/) , one of the most authoritative
and heard diplomatic voices of the United States for Venezuelan and Latin
American affairs, and let this "fall apart" with the consequences
that has for us, hemispheric international actors, beginning with the United
States, should consider playing an active rather than a passive role in this
situation that also affects them. It is time to begin the negotiation of a
kidnapped country.
Caracas,
October 19, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario