I believe that more authoritarianism in the opposition’s internal is a mistake.
when you bring traitors to people who do not think like your position, how can you qualify that? That is not democratic, because Democracy is precisely plurality. Trying to focus opinion matrices also underestimating the intelligence of Venezuelans, they are advertising campaigns that all they want is that people do not debate.
It does not go against anyone specifically. It does not go against anyone. I say it in general terms. Now, The unique thought, the unique party, here is what I say and if you are not such or thatit seems to me that this is what is on the sidewalk in front, which is the government, Venezuelans do not vote on July 28 to change one color for another.
In Colombia there is affection, obviously we are the same story. The fate of Colombia, of course, affects Venezuela’s fate, and Venezuela’s fate affects the future of Colombia. I don’t know what President Petro thinks today about the Venezuelan issue, I have no clarity about what his position isOne day he says one thing, another day says another. I have never talked to President Petro. I believe that sometimes the president of Colombia as has some opinions formed about opinion matrices that the Maduro government or even sectors also of the other end have tried to generate.
If I talked on some occasion with the Colombian ambassador to Venezuela and explained what was happening, to listen to the voice of the opposition to see what is happening, because the opponents in Venezuela are not coup plotters, rather, you have to see everything we have had to resist and if you get carried away by Maduro’s speech, because you are falling into Maduro’s lie.
Petro proposes a constituent, very similar to what happened in Venezuela …
Colombia has presidential elections next year. I do not believe that Colombia will end in a constitutional change. I don’t think you have support base. I agree with a re -election of a constitutional period not six years as we have in Venezuela.
I believe that Colombia goes to a change, without a doubt, I have no doubt, that after what has been the performance, which I have seen here, Colombia goes to a change.
How do you see Donald Trump’s policy to Venezuela?
I am neither Democrat or Republican. My request, governs Democrats or Republicans, is that Venezuela not only needs to recover its democracy, but needs to recover its economy and think that the future of Venezuela is tied to get Venezuela out of the western oil market, to get Venezuela out of the region and that our economic relations are with Russia, Iran and China, it is a mistake.
The policy of returning to something similar to 2019 is a mistake. The darkest time in the Venezuelan oil market was precisely whenfor example, North American and European companies could not be in the Venezuelan oil market. The government has recognized that 20,000 million dollars were stolen.
Those of us who end up being harmed are Venezuelans, because putting the example of Chevron, Chevron generates employment in direct, indirect, transparent Venezuela. Chevron has to account for your country because you have to submit tax declaration. To think that the economy must be squeezed, the only thing that will do is weaken the Venezuelan, weaken the social fabric, return to the Venezuelan more dependent on the Maduro government, and in the end it will not generate a political change. We already lived it.
How to articulate with the region a negotiation with Maduro and be firm in front of what happens in Venezuela?
What does it mean to be firm and strong? For me to be firm and strong and about what must be radical is to defend human rights. Human rights not only mean the political part, the exercise of politics, but the economic and the social. In this complex world, because democracy is also in trouble in the world. On July 27, 2024 Maduro stole the elections. What do we do? What does the international community do? Does it stay in rhetoric, simply in the diagnosis? Or does it help to tear this game? And how can this game be removed? For me, the way to tear this game is not isolating Venezuela.
In Venezuela there were millions of Venezuelans resisting, enduring, fighting, wanting the country to change so that those who left can also return. So, in the case of other countries in the region, I could tell them, let’s appeal to what has happened, where we have been able to move forward and where we have receded and do not use the Venezuelan issue for the internal policy of the countries because Venezuelans need solutions. We do not need to be part of a rhetoric.
