Another day of debate in Congress on Venezuela and, once again, what mattered to the parliamentary groups was settling scores with their rivals. The right did not care at all that the government of Pedro Sánchez refused to recognize the official victory of Nicolas Maduro and that it had given refuge in Spain to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González. The PSOE partners on the left considered it appropriate to denounce the “double standard” of the right, but they did not dare to clearly express their position on the situation created by the Venezuelan elections and on the lack of a complete control that would justify the re-election of Ripe.
The PNV’s support for the Popular Party’s illegal proposal will ensure that at least its first point is advanced and that Congress recognizes González as “the legitimate winner” of the July 28 elections and therefore as “president-elect.” Each of its nine points will be voted on separately, so it will not be known until Wednesday afternoon how many of them will be victorious. What is striking is that no parliamentary group has spoken out in favor of Maduro or recognized the victory proclaimed the following day by the country’s electoral authorities.
Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, of the PP, made it clear from the beginning that the PNL’s target was both the Sánchez government and that of Venezuela. Regarding Edmundo González’s decision to leave his country and seek refuge in Spain, he said that it was a maneuver by both governments against the opposition: “An operation designed by the dictatorship, organized by Zapatero and facilitated by the Spanish government.” This definition is in flagrant contradiction with what María Corina Machado, leader of the opposition, said, who justified it by the danger González was facing: “His life was in danger.”
The PP spokesman also disdained Sánchez’s praise for González, whom he called a “hero” in his speech before the PSOE Federal Committee, when he already knew that his arrival in Spain was imminent. Even such obvious words cannot prevent Álvarez de Toledo from continuing his determination to attack Sánchez, whatever he says. “The heroes are all Venezuelan democrats. Edmundo is something more. “He is the chosen one,” he said, demonstrating that the PP will not change its accusations against the socialists, regardless of the government’s support for the Venezuelan opposition, as it is indeed doing.
Socialist Cristina Narbona stressed that the Spanish position was essential for the EU not to recognize Maduro as the winner of the elections. In any case, the Venezuelan government has no allies among European countries. The PSOE presented an alternative amendment to the PP’s proposal, which commits the EU to work to find “a negotiated political solution in favor of the Venezuelan people” and includes analyzing whether the recognition of González as president, as demanded by the opposition, “can help with that.”
It is an idea that is not without ambiguity, but that allows the mediation initiatives favored by Latin American governments such as those of Brazil and Colombia to have some chance of success. What is known now is that at present, the promoters of this intervention are rather pessimistic and do not see any intention in Caracas to renounce the re-election of Maduro. They have not even managed to get the Venezuelan government to release the complete results of the vote, including the minutes of all the tables, as required by the country’s electoral legislation, which sets a maximum deadline of thirty days that has already been exceeded.
A head-on confrontation with Maduro would close all these avenues of dialogue. The PP is not worried about this option, because it is convinced that Caracas will not accept anything other than a total victory, which Álvarez de Toledo defined as “electoral theft at gunpoint.” He also said that “in the face of repression, only firmness is worth it,” although he said the same thing when the PP demanded that Juan Guaidó be recognized as “interim president,” which Spain and the EU did, and that “firmness” was of no use.
Among the left-wing groups, it was more important to talk about the PP or other cases to be noted in Latin America than about Venezuela. Gabriel Rufián did not recognize Maduro’s victory, although he said that the electoral results established by the opposition were false. He could have said then that the real results were those announced by the government, but he did not go that far. To Álvarez de Toledo’s statement that “popular sovereignty is sacred,” Esquerra’s spokesman responded by citing the independence referendum held in Catalonia in 2017.
Marta Madrenas, from Junts, went further. He did not talk about Venezuela, because what interested him was the process: “Everything that the Maduro regime says has been implemented in Catalonia.”
Gerardo Pisarello, from Sumar, opted for the diplomatic solution to the crisis that the governments of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are trying to attempt, against those who “are trying to set the country on fire.” He did not decide on the question of who won the Venezuelan elections and preferred to devote more time to denouncing the “hypocritical double standard” of the right with the coup in Bolivia, the assault on the Capitol in Brasilia, the destruction of Gaza, the coup in Chile from 1973 and up to “Macron’s authoritarian France.”
The speech by Javier Sánchez Serna of Podemos was similar, except that he limited his support for the efforts of Latin American countries to the position of the Mexican government of López Obrador. “We demand transparency in the electoral processes and respect for the institutions,” he said generically about the results. No spokesperson for EH Bildu came to the stand to explain the meaning of his vote.
Several hundred Venezuelan opponents of Maduro gathered in front of Congress. After the debate, PP and Vox deputies left the building to show their support. One of them was Santiago Abascal, who rarely attends the Tuesday plenary sessions.
The Congress’s statement will only have symbolic consequences. Yes, it will be a gesture of support for the Venezuelan opposition, which cannot hide the fact that Edmundo González’s departure from the country represents a setback in the fight against Maduro. It is likely that the reaction from Caracas will be as aggressive as the words that Delcy Rodríguez addressed to Minister Albares on Tuesday. The Venezuelan vice president accused the Sánchez government of making Spain “a sanctuary for Venezuelan terrorists and fascists.”
For an easy-to-assume reason, the Popular Party will ignore these virulent attacks and continue to maintain the fiction of the Sánchez-Maduro pacts. There is much talk these days about Venezuela, but the key is to win points in the national competition.
