The Venezuelan opposition's dividing line

By Luis Manuel Aguana

Versión en Español

To the memory of my father, Raúl Aguana Figuera, today on his 90th birthday,and from whom I learned that a man's only asset is his word...

It is extremely difficult to survive in a jungle. There are so many dangers that any help is sorely lacking. That is why the success stories of shipwrecked and missing people in the jungle are so well known and repeated, because in them people used the most chilling ways to survive. Politics is like a jungle and it is not at all strange that today a person is a "friend" and days later the circumstances change and he/she becomes your most bitter "enemy". Or just the opposite. For people who can only keep one face regardless of the circumstances, politics turns out to be an almost impossible exercise because in addition to your enemies, you also throw out your friends, or at least those you thought were friends.

Since I started writing in this forum that I created for myself, I have done nothing but say what I think about politics and those who claim to do politics in Venezuela. And in the years that I have been doing so in hundreds of published notes I believe I can sustain that I have never fallen into contradictions, or at least I have not been shown any until now, and the documents are on the net for everyone to see. Since I called collaborationists for the first time in 2011 to the official opposition (see in Spanish Los opositores de Vichy, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2011/09/los-opositores-de-vichy.html) there has been nothing to prove I was wrong: "Hugo Chávez's government has already passed the point of no return. It has already divided society into two irreconcilable halves. I do not pretend here to say that it will be impossible not to build bridges to the Chavista country when this disgrace ends and a stage of national reconstruction begins. What I intend to say is that in order to get there, some opposition parties are selling their souls to the devil and are tolerating more than what should be tolerated and that this has already had a name since 1940". That is why I will not be able to say otherwise until I am proven otherwise.

I continued to support this same position in my recent note on the "new opposition alliance" called NELA by the person who announced it from Bogota, the U.S. Ambassador himself. (see NELA, the next scam, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/nela-next-scam.html), where I indicate what really happened in the Popular Consultation. That is, the parties said they supported the Unitary Pact of September 7, 2020 out of their mouths, then sabotaged it and subsequently silenced it after its overwhelming results were known, in a fatuous attempt to silence what we all in Venezuela want: that the regime leaves first in order to hold free elections. That does not enter the official opposition's head. And it is logical that this cannot enter the mind of a collaborationist. It prefers to negotiate "conditions" with the regime in an environment of zero freedom in order to continue prospering at the expense of the suffering of all. Hence, I ratify that this evil behavior makes them the worst enemies of Venezuelans, more than the regime itself.

This situation forced the factors that supported the Popular Consultation to establish a new Citizen's Route in defense of the constitutional mandate expressed from December 7 to 12, calling everyone to sign a Citizen's Pact for the Constitutional and Democratic Restoration (see in Spanish Conoce el Pacto para el Restablecimiento Constitucional, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2021/03/conoce-el-pacto-para-el.html)  that calls for an organizational form of the entire civil society to defend those results, making a real and effective opposition to tyranny. We would not have had the need to do that on our own IF THE POLITICAL FACTORS OF THE COUNTRY THAT SIGNED THE UNITARY PACT OF SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 HAD NOT TURNED THE BACK ON THE MANDATE OF THE POPULAR CONSULTATION.

This situation leads the rest of the opposition country, that is, those of us who do not follow party lines and are still hopelessly waiting for them to do something to solve the serious crisis the country is going through, to carry out their own strategy and draw a line on the ground indicating a division between what they do and what we do to get rid of the tyranny of Nicolás Maduro Moros. And the main basis on which that platform rests is the decision made by 6.4 million Venezuelans from December 7 to 12, 2020 in a binding and mandatory Popular Consultation for all Venezuelans, including especially those parties.

I must clarify that we are not discarding the official opposition parties. They are the ones who still have the opposition franchise before the International Community. They have the representation of what is left of the Legitimate National Assembly and they still have the main interlocution with the factors of the International Community that can do something to help us get out of this tragedy, even if I believe that this must change, as we will see later on. The parties ceased to represent the feeling of Venezuelans, even more so after the public declaration of the main ones in the National Assembly, where from that moment on they only represent themselves (see in Spanish communiqué of the parties published by the National Assembly Communications Center, n https://twitter.com/Presidencia_VE/status/1379585467423789060), seeking a rapprochement with the factors of civil society. What is different from now on should be the terms in which this rapprochement should be handled. This was clearly highlighted in a previous note (see a Matter of representation in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/a-matter-of-representation.html).

Where does that leave us? It is only natural that the rest of Venezuelans who do not agree with the interests of those parties, and that our only interest is to get out of the regime, should group together and make decisions outside those entities that have an existential conflict that has prevented Venezuela from getting out of this criminal regime. We could say, in general terms, that all the factors that are grouped around the strict compliance of the Popular Consultation, by signing a Citizen's Pact for Constitutional and Democratic Reestablishment, we will have to make the necessary decisions to comply with the mandate of the people. Those who do not sign it, if this includes the parties, are not our enemies, we will only consider that it is very possible that they have other interests than those of seeing Maduro out of power. It is as simple as that...

This division of the opposition line, draws a line on the floor between those who want to see Maduro out of power before any other consideration, and marks a clear direction in which the non-partisan opposition should move from now on. If the partisan factors generate positions that coincide with a clear line in favor of the fulfillment of the Popular Consultation, there would be absolutely no inconvenience in agreeing on meeting points to achieve that goal, including shared actions. But this civil society movement established by the Citizens' Pact for Constitutional and Democratic Restoration must have its own representation, voice and image, nationally and internationally, apart from that which the parties may have in their capacity as political representatives. And they will not be the ones to represent our positions before the country or outside it. This independence IS NOT NEGOTIABLE. The Conference for the Constitutional and Democratic Restoration, an instrument derived from the Pact, must in fact demand to be present in any international initiative that involves us as legitimate representatives of the mandate of the 6.4 million Venezuelans who demonstrated in the Popular Consultation of December 7-12, 2020.

This new way of conceiving the opposition fact, puts in its rightful place those who until now have represented for a long time and in a non-proportional and unfair way the interests of Venezuelans, with the consequences we all know. And given that free elections do not exist and will not exist until Maduro leaves the power he illegally usurps, a legitimate representation of the opposition country not represented by the parties must assume the role that corresponds to it, well distanced from those who until now have represented the political interests of Venezuelans. I am not excluding the participation of the parties, I am demanding the participation of the majority of the country through a legitimate representation that has never been exercised by the civil society. We already have the platform to do so from the installation of the Conference for the Constitutional Restoration today. Let's not miss the opportunity to make this unprecedented initiative work, in commemoration of that Venezuelan civil society that today 211 years ago did not recognize the authority of a Captain General, taking the first step towards its freedom on April 19, 1810…

Caracas, April 19, 2021

Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/

Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com

Twitter:@laguana

Instagram: @laguana01

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