By Luis Manuel Aguana
Lecture given on the web by invitation of the
Association of Venezuelan Graduates of the Federal Republic of Germany
Dear friends,
First of all I would like to thank the Association of Venezuelan
Graduates of the Federal Republic of Germany, AVERFA, and its host, Eng. Carlos
Granados, for this invitation. I am especially sensitive to the Alumni
Associations as I have been part of the Alumni Board of the Advanced Management
Program - PAG at IESA for many years and have represented it on one occasion as
its President. That is why I know how difficult it is to keep graduates
interested in issues of relevance to their Alma Mater and to them, and
especially in your case, around issues of importance to the country in
connection with your respective home universities.
Today, we have to exchange on a topic of special relevance: the options
that Venezuela has to get out of the political crisis. I will try to address
this issue in the most executive way, that is, not to ask myself how we arrived
at the situation we are living in, but to consider the alternatives to solve
the problem. We could spend many hours here speculating on how we arrived at
this state of mass destruction, the result of which is exactly the same as in a
country suffering from war: people escaping across borders, hyperinflation,
political persecution, hunger, uncertainty, just to name a few.
In my opinion, the opposition political leadership has tried to apply
ordinary and simple remedies to an extraordinary and complex problem, and as it
has become more serious over the years, it has put itself even further out of
reach of being able to solve it, to the point that the solution is now out of
reach and cannot be solved. There was a particular moment in the country's
political history in this whole tragedy where it was possible to address it
with the ordinary political electoral solution, after the death of Hugo Chávez
in the Capriles-Maduro elections in April 2013, when Maduro's fraud was
presented with the difference of 200,000 votes. That was a moment essentially
comparable to the Bolivian feat in which the people shook Evo Morales because
he had committed fraud. Unfortunately, Henrique Capriles paralyzed the country at
a crucial moment and did not take the people to the streets as if the Bolivians
had done it. It was not possible for the CNE to hide that fraud but the
Venezuelan politicians did not understand it. And it was not the first time,
neither before nor after. But as I said, let's not look back.
What do we have right now? There are two basic proposals under
discussion. The first can be said to be led by María Corina Machado, who
basically proposes an international coalition of countries to intervene in the
situation in Venezuela. This proposal is not new. Machado had already published
this position in an article in El Mundo of Spain in the same sense, where she
proposed an "International Coalition to deploy a Peace and Stabilization
Operation in Venezuela" (see in Spanish, “Venezuela: el desafío ineludible
para Occidente”, in https://www.elmundo.es/opinion/columnistas/2020/06/08/5ede1f2cfdddff85af8b45e5.html).
However, this proposal was made official through a communiqué headed by
María Corina Machado in her capacity as Coordinator of Vente Venezuela, Antonio
Ledezma, Diego Arria, Humberto Calderón Berti, Carlos Ortega, Enrique
Aristeguieta Gramcko and Asdrúbal Aguiar, where after an ample exposition of
reasons, they launch a message of help to the International Community:
"The international
community urgently needs a new and precise condemnation of the electoral farce
in which its despotic regime is advancing at this time, in complicity with
false actors of the democratic opposition. It has political and legal
mechanisms at its disposal. It knows them well, but they call for political
will, such as the universal principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the
obligations imposed by the Palermo Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime, and regionally, the support for multilateral collective action provided
by the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR). They can no
longer remain dead letters. International
action to restore peace and identity to Venezuela cannot be postponed". (highlighted by
us)(see full release in Spanish in http://www.ventevenezuela.org/2020/06/17/comunicado-maria-corina-ledezma-arria-calderon-berti-aguiar-aristeguieta-gramcko-y-carlos-ortega-piden-accion-internacional-que-le-devuelva-la-paz-a-venezuela/).
This request implies an action coming entirely from abroad, assuming
that not all options have been tried in Venezuela, especially the military one.
And although this action was not specifically mentioned in that communication,
it was implicit in the popular imagination. We will return to that later.
The second proposal comes from actors from a broad sector of Venezuelan
civil society, proposing an action from the framework of the Organization of
American States, requesting what was called a Humanitarian Solution of an
electoral nature from the Secretary General of the OAS within the Permanent
Council:
"This Solution can be expressed through: a) an electoral act that
forces the regime that usurps power in Venezuela to accept the people's mandate
in a binding Popular Consultation,
established in our Constitution, that allows the people in exercise of
popular sovereignty to decide on the Cessation of Usurpation, the formation of
a Transitional Government that guarantees basic and institutional conditions,
of social coexistence, that allows the holding of free and democratic
elections; or b) by a Presidential
Election that replaces the legitimate exercise of the usurped Presidency of
the Republic. In either case (a-b), the effective, organizational and
dissuasive support of the international community is essential to guarantee its
full realization and fulfillment; privileging
the political over the use of violence in any of its manifestations. In this
solution we reiterate: the OAS would be in charge of organizing, carrying out
and directly supervising the electoral process, in accordance with the
provisions established in the Inter-American Democratic Charter". (see in Spanish Letter
to the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, which can be signed by any
Venezuelan, at https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/apoyo-la-solicitud-de-la-sociedad-civil-venezolana-al-secretario-general-de-la-oea-para-la-aplicaci%C3%B3n-de-una-soluci%C3%B3n-humanitaria-de-caracter-electoral.html).
In this proposal, it is the People's Sovereignty that would decide the
destiny of the country within an institutional framework, asking the brother
countries of the continent for their support to become a reliable arbiter for
the realization of a free and transparent electoral process.
We believe that if the international community were to move in the
direction of foreign intervention, it would have already materialized.
Everything points to the fact that this solution is not in the minds of the
governments of the 13 countries that signed the Rio Treaty (TIAR), as indicated
by our Ambassador to the OAS, Gustavo Tarre Briceño, in an interview on June
18th on EVTV in Miami (see in Spanish EVTV, Ma. Corina knows that TIAR
countries don't want to intervene …, in https://youtu.be/w_ri8pR09LI y https://youtu.be/zZVNCxONw-k), so definitely
the first option would only have possibilities of success if the Interim
Government of Juan Guaidó moved internationally for its execution, something
that we see as very difficult, even more so when the parties of his coalition,
the G4, have rejected military intervention as a solution for Venezuela,
privileging elections with the regime of Nicolás Maduro Moros and its CNE.
Although this proposal looks very attractive to the common Venezuelan people,
we must recognize that it is very little possible in practice, and continuing
to insist on it delays the arrival of a solution with greater chances of
success.
The proposal made to the OAS is aligned with the electoral solution that
all countries have suggested for Venezuela, especially those that support
Maduro, such as the Russian Federation, but it goes through the acceptance of
the regime for its implementation. Hence, the proposal requires that the
International Community be convinced beforehand that any pressure made from now
on to those in power will be so that they accept to be counted in an arbitrary
manner by the International Community, specifically through the OAS, in
accordance with the request made, based mainly on the fact that there is no
arbitrator in the country who is generally trusted by Venezuelans. Hence, the
pressure from the countries should continue, but from now on focused on the
achievement of the fundamental objective of getting the OAS to be that
arbitrator and the regime to accept it.
The regime will not accept such an imposition if it is not accompanied
by the countries that support it from outside, mainly Russia and China.
Therefore, the role played by the United States and the rest of the countries
accompanying this solution is crucial to the success of this proposal. If this
indispensable first step is achieved, the Venezuelan people would express
themselves inside and outside Venezuela, or in a Popular Consultation,
establishing the basis for a Transitional Government or a Presidential
Election.
However, the two proposals are not necessarily
mutually exclusive; on the contrary, I believe that they are complementary.
Because the fact that a group of Venezuelans are pushing for the regime to have
a reliable international arbiter does not mean that if this effort fails as the
last bastion of achieving change through peaceful and electoral means, there is
no plan being developed in parallel that will generate a credible threat that
will force the regime to a peaceful solution. In other words, THIS PEACEFUL
SOLUTION. However, it is not up to us, as part of a peaceful proposal, to
indicate how or who would develop such a plan. That remains for those who are
defending it and say that we are sabotaging them. When Henry Kissinger was
negotiating the peace of Vietnam at a table in Paris, the war was going on,
without losing sight of the fact that it was always more likely to achieve
peace much more quickly through peaceful means, whatever the time, than to
continue a war indefinitely. That is the lesson of a solution like the one
proposed to the OAS, but based on a strategy aimed at putting pressure on a
reliable arbitrator between the parties. The OAS solution is the institutional
way, the other is the way of continuing the war, as I explained in my last
article (see Between the institutional and the political, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/between-institutional-and-political.html).
However, we have incredibly polarized even the solutions. They have
attacked the proposal without knowing it since it came out under the name of
Humanitarian Solution of Electoral Nature, just because it bears the name
"electoral". Unbelievable how far intolerance has gone among us!
People find it hard to read beyond the 240 characters on Twitter. And that's
why we're here. I think it is in the opposition's best interest to start building
this solution with the OAS, especially the President in Charge. He is a few
months away from elections called by an illegitimate CNE, which will be
attended by the parties that support him in the National Assembly - kidnapped
or not, but without the People's Will. And I believe that his political
disappearance will take place after those elections.
That is why the President-in-Charge must act very quickly. However,
without a crisis cabinet or group seriously engaged in building a political or
military solution, if any, with our international allies, we will certainly not
have a way out of the problem. No one will move a finger out for us if we don't
move first, because answers don't just fall from the sky, they have to be
worked on. That is why civil society will have to keep on generating ideas to
take them to the political arena, in the hope that they will be taken advantage
of by those who have the responsibility to make them a reality. And I firmly
believe that this is one of them.
Thank you very much.
Caracas, June 26, 2020
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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