We are urged to prevent the functional opposition from hampering the freedom of Venezuela

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 24/01/2025

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The leadership of María Corina Machado has freed the Venezuelan peoples and has taken Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia to the presidency of Venezuela, sustainably defeating 21st Century Socialism for over two years until it made possible for Venezuelans to have a Constitutional President who, as of yet, has not been sworn-in. The factual reality shows that the functional opposition has resumed initiatives to sustain organized crime. It behooves all of us to prevent the functional opposition from hampering Venezuela’s freedom.

María Corina Machado adopted the strategy to confront Venezuela’s dictatorship, hence 21st Century Socialism throughout the Americas, under the electoralist dictatorship rules of Castrochavism. She won the primaries with 92.56% of the votes in October of 2023 defeating the functional opposition. When the dictatorship illegally disqualified her, she continued fighting and proposed the candidacy of Corina Yoris and when she was also disqualified, she was able to nominate as candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia who had been accepted by the regime. Thenceforth, she produced the incredible endorsement of his popularity and on 28 July of 2024 defeated Maduro with over 2/3 of the votes.

When Maduro counterfeited the narrative to have won the elections, Machado wreaked him with the electoral control of her “comanditos” comprised by over 600,000 Venezuelans who had documented, precinct by precinct, balloting reports showing the real results of the elections and stripped the dictatorship. When 21st Century Socialism opted to use State-terrorism and crimes against humanity, Maria Corina Machado resisted and remained in Venezuelan territory.

Castrochavism aimed to isolate Machado by detaining, exiling, torturing, and killing members of her trusted inner-circle so that it could replace them with leaders of the functional opposition, known operators of the Venezuelan dictatorship who always appear to confront the regime when, in reality, they are abettors of its indefinite permanence. The strategy of 21st Century Socialism is to place “the usual cadres” in control of the decisions of the Constitutional President to prevent his/her fulfillment of the sovereign mandate bestowed. Decisions that, perhaps, could take the president to dialogue, other types of negotiations, or more of the same, so that organized crime continues wielding power.

This would explain the non-swearing-in of President-Elect Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia who should already be exercising as Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and discharging his duties from abroad to recover the sovereignty of his country.

Since the 10th of January of 2025, with the parody of Maduro swearing-in as president, Venezuela is an occupied country invaded by a criminal/military invasion group that pretends to keep the internal control and the international representation of the nation.

Venezuela is subjected to an armed occupation through violence, intimidation, and Maduro’s public announcement that he has the weapons from Cuba and Nicaragua to sustain his crimes and to continue usurping Venezuelan wealth to continue maintaining those dictatorships and to continue being the platform for attacks against the democracies of the Americas.

In the United States, Gonzalez Urrutia attended as a guest at the swearing-in of President Donald Trump but he should have attended as the Constitutional President of Venezuela proposing actions needed to free his homeland. He has not sworn-in as a Constitutional President but he must do so in-spite of the “advisors from the functional opposition” who have unleashed a campaign not to repeat the case of Guaidó, without considering the fact that the former president labeled as legitimate never won a popular election and that despite being in Venezuelan territory never discharged his empowerment as Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces and Head of State.

The functional opposition is part of an extensive media and social networks’ campaign that 21st Century Socialism has unleashed attempting to assassinate Maria Corina Machado’s reputation. They simulate earnestness while they gain time for organized crime to deepen the use of State-terrorism and to seek negotiations. They have even gone as far as disavowing the exiled Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the argument that “it was eliminated from the statute for the transition,” attempting to justify this by presenting the position of former Latin American presidents who certainly do not share such empowerment.

Since the President-Elect does not assume his mandate as Constitutional President, the two plus years of successes of the Venezuelan peoples under the leadership of Maria Corina Machado today appear to depend on the vision and the new foreign policy of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio that, we hope, will not be influenced by the same functional opposition that allowed Maduro to remain in power in 2019 and following years. To repeat the organized crime maneuver would be great for 21st Century Socialism, but would signal the defeat of democracy in the Americas.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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