September 8, 2024
graphic: Vicman, Venezuela News
Yesterday, in the evening hours, the executive vice-president of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, informed that Edmundo González, former opposition presidential candidate, left the country for the Kingdom of Spain after a personal and voluntary request for political asylum.
González, stated Rodríguez, had taken refuge “voluntarily in the embassy of the Kingdom of Spain several days ago”.
The Venezuelan government, in response to the request, granted “the necessary safe-conducts for the sake of the tranquility and political peace of the country”, and reaffirmed “the respect for the law that has prevailed in the actions of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the international community”.
Subsequently, the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, confirmed the information assuring that the former candidate, at “his request, is flying to Spain in a Spanish Air Force plane”, a decision that closes a brief but noisy chapter of speculation in social networks on the veracity of what was reported by the Venezuelan Vice-President.
The situation has generated a stir in the national and international public opinion for being an event that strategically alters the picture of the Venezuelan political situation.
Gonzalez’s departure from the country has taken everyone by surprise, and in principle has meant a deep emotional and moral blow for the Venezuelan opposition sector led by Maria Corina Machado, who until yesterday did not doubt the former candidate’s commitment to the “Until the end” route: to force a change of regime by extra-constitutional means before January 10, 2025.
There is no such “exile” or “banishment”
The political and informative shock has been such that from different opinion spaces of the opposition world , a damage control narrative has been promoted to limit the blow to the credibility of the former candidate.
This discourse has been focused on projecting Gonzalez’s exit from the country as the result of a negotiation between the governments of Spain and Venezuela or, failing that, between the PUD and the national government.
However, several practical elements confirm the fragility and shortcomings of this narrative.
In the first place, the statement of the Spanish Chancellor. Albares insisted that Gonzalez’s request was voluntary, of a personal nature, in line with what Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said in the evening hours. Consequently, the alleged “exile” was not an agreed fact.
Gonzalez has put his personal and family interests in the first place, and that is what the asylum request granted by the Spanish government responded to.
Secondly, the information about the plane. The newspaper El País and other Spanish media revealed that the asylum request had been in process for days and that the plane that finally transported him to Spain was waiting in the Dominican Republic for the result of the request, where former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero mediated.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Caspar Veldkamp, revealed that Gonzalez was lodged in the embassy of the kingdom in Caracas since July 29.
According to Veldkamp, the former candidate expressed his unilateral intention to change his residence and leave the country at the beginning of September.
In short, everything indicates that his decision was made some time ago, without being subject to negotiations between the Venezuelan and Spanish governments, or with the PUD parties.
For Gonzalez, personal and family calculations prevailed over political calculations, indicating most probably that the supposed “transition” he was called to lead was in a dead end, without any concrete capacity for success.
Premeditated lies and the early start for Maria Corina Machado
Since he jumped into the limelight in the context of the registration of presidential candidacies, it was always warned that Edmundo Gonzalez was cut by the uses and customs of the traditional Venezuelan opposition, in which cynical calculation, the game of appearances and the search for scenarios of personal convenience as an end in itself prevails.
He was not an outsider, but an insider of the old anti-Chavista guard: a politician closer to the pragmatism of Rosales than to the fanatic dogmatism of María Corina Machado.
Reading the objective conditions plus calculus of convenience, an unbendable principle of the old foxes of national politics.
On July 30, once the master lines of the coup d’état were deactivated, the panorama would change.
María Corina Machado’s suicidal bet exposed him to a situation of vulnerability, unassumable for someone who has made of low profile, diplomacy and behind the scenes operations a life’s work.
Facing the change of scenario, a change of attitude. Ramos Allup’s “bending over backwards not to split” returning to the center of the scene.
In his letter sent to the Attorney General on September 4, a change of behavior could already be sensed. This tribune did not fail to characterize it as a “political turnaround”.
Edmundo Gonzalez did the same and recognized the Venezuelan institutions and dissociated himself from the publication of the alleged “minutes”, in a clear sign of disagreement with Maria Corina Machado.
Meanwhile, his lawyer, José Vicente Haro, became the public defense of the former candidate and affirmed, before the doubts of the media, that he was not lodged in any diplomatic headquarters and that he was not planning to leave the country.
“Edmundo Gonzalez is going to remain in Venezuelan territory”, said Haro only five days ago, in an attempt to diminish the anxiety in the opposition world.
Finally, it has been proven that Gonzalez was playing shadow theater. At the same time that, through Haro, he was sending a message of security and calm to the opposition universe, he was silently negotiating his asylum in Spain, in clear view without consulting or establishing a negotiation with the PUD and María Corina Machado.
Machado was the first victim of Edmundo’s madrugonazo. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was the one who gave the initial information that allowed the country to know about Gonzalez’s escape.
Hours before, Machado was one hundred percent focused on the police presence in the surroundings of the Argentine embassy in Caracas, where members of her closest team are guarded. An indication that Gonzalez’s movement was not of her knowledge, nor was it among her priorities to be communicated.
Through her account in X, Machado has wanted to amend the situation with a long message in which she suggests that Edmundo’s self-exile does not imply a failure nor a political defeat.
However, her story has not been able to fully penetrate or overcome the disillusionment since it is an indisputable fact that González made his decision in secret, without giving explanations neither to Machado nor to his voters, in a sign of enormous weakness before the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Manipulation of history and the Guaido mirror
In political terms, the silent flight from the country of a “political leader” who theoretically crushed Chavismo with a historic 70% vote, who was in the process of leading a supposed “transition” to assume power soon, can only be understood as a political defeat, with an enormous moral and emotional cost downstream for those who trusted that the definitive fall of Nicolás Maduro was assured.
Right now, by way of compensation, a narrative has been deployed based on the manipulation of historical background: comparing the self-exile of Edmundo Gonzalez with the political activity of Romulo Betancourt abroad aimed at the fall of Marcos Perez Jimenez. In this way, the illusion of a triumphant return, after a stay in Madrid projected as “necessary” and “decisive” for the agenda of regime change in Venezuela, is trafficked.
This story can hardly have political substance, since history has confirmed that there is a direct correlation, in the case of opposition public figures, between fleeing Venezuela and losing political capital and influence. The Guaidó case confirms this.
In the collective unconscious of the radical opposition stays alive the mixture of anger and frustration for a Guaidó who, at the time, also promised to continue “the fight” from abroad.
In any case, the flight of González confirms the closing of a political chapter, in which the imminence of the “transition” in Venezuela is finally blurred.
The main defeated is none other than María Corina Machado, who has tried to sell every false step as part of a “robust strategy”, which continues to have no practical effects in reality.
Source: Mision Verdad