Another Regime Change Operation Begins to Fizzle in Venezuela, As Opposition Leader Flees to Spain

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Does this mean Venezuela is about to have another parallel government with a puppet leader in exile? In other words, a Guaidó 2.0? Probably not.

There are shades of deja vu to recent developments in post-election Venezuela. Edmundo González Urrutia, the 75-year-old Venezuelan opposition leader who ran for president in the July 28 elections and is claimed to have won by a landslide by opposition supporters, fled to Spain on Sunday, where he is expected to reside as a political exile for the foreseeable future.

Spain’s Pedro Sánchez government agreed to grant González Urrutia political asylum following the mediation of former Spanish President José Luis Zapatero. In a speech on Monday, Sánchez referred to González Urrutia as a “hero,” likening him to persecuted politicians in countries like Russia and Palestine. Spain has offered asylum to several Venezuelan opposition figures in recent years, including Leopoldo López, a far-right politician who escaped house arrest in 2019.

González Urritia’s exile to Spain leaves Venezuela’s already fractured opposition in a much weakened state — a fact that even some opposition figures such as Ana Milagros Parra, a political scientist, are willing to admit: “It cannot be denied that this is a blow to the democratic movement because it gives the government an opportunity to control the narrative,” so they can say “we are winning and the opposition was always divided.”

Unanswered Questions

González Urritia first took refuge in Spain’s Embassy in Caracas before being granted safe passage by Maduro government. Before that, he was a guest for roughly a month at the Dutch Embassy next door. As the Dutch Foreign Minister, Caspar Veldkamp, revealed in a letter to the Dutch Parliament, the opposition presidential candidate had taken refuge at the ambassador’s residence on July 29, the day after the elections.

Following this revelation, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, said Caracas will file a formal note of protest to the Dutch government for giving refuge to the opposition leader for an entire month without informing Venezuelan authorities. The timing of Gónzalez Urritia’s arrival at the embassy is also drawing suspicions.

“What did Mr. González Urrutia know was about to happen in Venezuela?” said Gil in a video, pointing out that while the candidate took refuge at the Dutch embassy, “terror commanders were burning down hospitals and schools”.

Spain’s role in the proceedings is also far from clear. The country’s Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has denied any coordination with the Venezuela government to facilitate González Urrutia’s safe-conduct out of the country, which begs the question: how was the Spanish government able to pull off such a feat without first liaising with its counterparts in Caracas?

“It is strange that the Spanish foreign minister says such things,” said Diosdado Cabello, the hugely influential first vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and Minister of the Interior. “How does a Spanish government plane get here to Venezuela?… Did it invade us? No, no, no. It was discussed, worked on, if he does not want to use the term ‘negotiated'”.

Despite denying that it coordinated the operation with Caracas, the Spanish government is happy to acknowledge former Spanish PM Zapatero’s role in mediating between the two sides. The presumed reason for all this nonsensical subterfuge is the government’s fear of a backlash from Spain’s two main opposition parties, the Popular Party (PP) and Vox, both of which are rabidly anti-Chavista.

Both have called for a vote in Congress to recognise González Urrutia as Venezuela’s president elect. At the same time, former PP Prime Minister José María Aznar’s think tank, FAES, has blasted the government’s granting of asylum to Edmundo González, calling it “an act of complicity with the Maduro regime when it is was at its weakest.” All of the Maduro government’s “repressive hatred” will now be focused squarely on fellow opposition leader, María Corina Machado, FAES says.

Meet the Real Boss

González Urritia was never more than a place-holder for Corina Machado, a US-backed politician who was the opposition front runner before being barred from holding political office on corruption charges as well as her full-throttled support for US intervention. That support has taken many forms over the years, from backing US-led sanctions against Venezuela’s economy to supporting the Trump administration’s farcical attempt to impose Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, to directly asking foreign governments, including Israel and Argentina, to intervene militarily in the country.

Often referred to by her supporters as “Venezuela’s Iron Lady”, Corina Machado is essentially running the opposition’s operations. On Sunday, she claimed that González Urritia’s departure was necessary to keep him and his family safe from “the increasing threats, summonses, arrest warrants and even the attempts at blackmail and coercion to which he has been subjected…In the face of this brutal reality, it is necessary for our cause to preserve his freedom, his integrity and his life.”

The Maduro government has a very different take on events. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said the Maduro government agreed to grant González the necessary safe passage “for the sake of tranquility and political peace in the country.” González was wanted on a series of criminal charges, including usurpation of functions, conspiracy, public document forgery, sabotage and association to commit crimes, but the Maduro government insists that the case against him will be closed now that he has left the country.

The results of Venezuela’s elections are still shrouded in uncertainty. With the National Electoral Council and the opposition offering two completely different sets of results, one of the two parties must be lying. Not helping the government’s case is the fact that the CNE is still yet to publish the full tally sheets despite calls to do so from governments around the world, including friendly ones such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

On the other hand, the opposition’s claims that it won almost 70% of the vote beggars belief. It was also lightening quick to declare victory, relying heavily on exit polling by Edison Research, a company that, as Ben Norton reports, “works closely with CIA-linked US state propaganda outlets and previously did dubious polling in Ukraine, Georgia, and Iraq.” Also, this is not the first time the opposition has cried fraud. From Venezuela Analysis:

[S]imilar allegations have occurred in almost all major elections in Venezuela. But, on this occasion, the opposition launched not one, but three websites where they published 24,000 alleged tally sheets issued by the voting machines…

The Venezuelan people are waiting for evidence and answers not only to confirm or know who won the elections, but also to find out who is lying and causing unrest and chaos in a country that has been under continuous attack from foreign powers for at least 20 years, and whose people are not allowed to live in peace.

It is worth recalling that the Machado and González fraud claims were accompanied by violent protests in several cities across the country on Monday, July 29, and Tuesday, July 30, which left several people dead, dozens injured, and caused damage to numerous institutions and public infrastructure. The Venezuelan government has reported that several of the people captured causing violent acts are part of criminal gangs, and many have confessed to being hired to create chaos.

Maduro has denounced an ongoing coup supported by the United States government, and the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, made unsurprising statements backing González as the supposed winner of the elections.

Guaidó 2.0?

In a letter published on Monday afternoon, González explained that he had left Venezuela so that “things can change” there. Our destiny as a country, he wrote, “cannot, should not, be that of a conflict of pain and suffering. I have (left Venezuela)  thinking of my family and all Venezuelan families in this moment of such tension and anguish. I have done it so that things can change and we can build a new stage for Venezuela.”

Shortly after the letter was made public, Corina Machado insisted in a video that “on January 10, 2025, President-elect Edmundo González Urrutia will be sworn in as constitutional president of Venezuela. Let this be very clear to everyone: Edmundo will fight from the outside with our diaspora and I will continue to do so here, together with you.”

She also called on Venezuelans living in Spain to participate in a rally in front of Spain’s Congress, in Madrid’s Plaza de las Cortes, to “vindicate” the mandate of the July 28 elections in Venezuela so that “the whole world” recognizes Edmundo González as president-elect.

Does this mean Venezuela is about to have another parallel government with a puppet leader in exile? In other words, a Guaidó 2.0?

Probably not. For a start, in his letter González Urrutia praises Corina Machado’s work but gives no hint of a future role for himself in the opposition coalition. As Venezuela Analysis notes, Machado may have run “on the slogan that she would fight ‘until the end’ but the absence of González inside the country makes her goal of seating the former candidate in the presidency virtually impossible.”

Even BBC Mundo concedes that González Urrutia’s departure, which “takes out of the equation the figure that some are claiming as president-elect, seems like a victory for Chavismo.” Plus, the prospect of another parallel government in exile does not enthuse many, even within Venezuela’s opposition. Gloria Pinho, a former opposition presidential candidate and lawyer, said:

“Now we are facing what seems to be another episode in this repeated history: the possible absurd and irritating swearing-in of Edmundo González on January 10, from abroad, by Zoom, with the participation of the few remaining members of the now-defunct National Assembly but who have continued to be paid since 2015, and with the same guests as always, those we all know, writing a new page in the Guinness Book of Records for parallel governments.”

But Corina Machado appears to be undeterred, claiming there is growing discontent in Maduro’s inner circle as international pressure continues to accentuate Venezuela’s isolation in Latin America and beyond.

“We’ve reached a point where we need to move forward, as I said, and therefore it’s time for Edmundo Gonzalez to be recognized as president-elect of Venezuela,” Corrina Machado declared by zoom at an event last Thursday organized by the Council of Americas, an American think tank founded by David Rockefeller that has waged significant influence over US policy in the region for the past 60 years.

Corina Machado’s latest proposals include a further intensification of sanctions on Venezuela as well as calls for an arrest warrant against Nicolás Maduro by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity.” But so far, only Javier Milei’s Argentina has asked the ICC to arrest Maduro. And only a small fraction of the 42 countries that recognized Juan Guaidó have done the same with González Urrutia.

As I noted a few weeks ago, the US quietly reversed its decision to recognise González Urrutia as president elect and has so far only introduced fresh sanctions against 15 Chavista politicians. The Biden Administration needs Venezuela’s oil to keep flowing in order to keep prices at the pump as low as possible during what remains of election season.

In fact, in August, the month directly after the disputed elections, Venezuela’s crude oil exports hit their highest level in four years, fuelled by increased shipments to China, the US and the EU. Annual inflation is at its lowest level (43%) in 11 years, which is actually a sixth of Argentina’s current inflation rate, and economic growth is projected to surpass 10% this year — none of which bodes well for the hardline opposition.

The self-imposed exile of González Urrutia comes as Venezuela’s anti-Chavismo bloc suffers a series of demoralising political defeats,  notes the Argentine geopolitical analyst Bruno Sgarzini:

The validation of the Venezuelan TSJ of Maduro’s triumph, without yet showing the results disaggregated by states, the failure of the international mediation of Colombia, Mexico and Colombia that they hoped would help pave the way for Maduro’s exit, the low participation in the last two anti-government protests. The arrest of opponents and demonstrators involved in the protests also reveal a significant disconnect between the expectations projected by María Corina Machado and the political reality in Venezuela…

For the Venezuelan writer Erik del Bukalo, who considers Chavismo a criminal organization: “If the opposition were a sinking ship: the captain goes first by air, the crew is imprisoned or has their lives destroyed around them and, of course, the passengers drown in the sea of misery. Someday we must stop listening to the violinists of self-deception.”

Put simply, Venezuela does not have a strong, credible opposition — much like my country-in-law, Mexico. Even with the support of the US, EU and numerous US-aligned governments in Latin America, not to mention the constant backing of the Western media and lobby groups, it has not been able to unseat Chavez or Maduro. As NC reader Cristobal wrote in the thread to a previous post, “repeated attempts to overthrow the government by means of military coups, post electoral violence, economic sanctions, and millions of dollars worth of destabilisation efforts including terrorism and cyberattacks” have come to nought.

But there is plenty of money to be made along the way — and not just by Venezuela’s opposition. As readers may recall, the UK continues to hold on to Venezuela’s roughly $2 billion of gold deposits stored at the Bank of England, long after Venezuela’s leading opposition parties voted to oust Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s one-time self-anointed president.

As for Guaidó himself, he is currently hosting a forum on democracy at the University of Florida, in his recently adopted city of Miami. In his inaugural address, Guaidó, the man who once proclaimed himself president of Venezuela from a city square in downtown Caracas in January 2019, with zero democratic legitimacy, and then proceeded to lay claim to the funds and goods owned by the Venezuelan government abroad, including its gold in London, warned that freedom “is under attack not only in Venezuela, but throughout the world.”