Opposition’s mockery after Gonzalez’s arrest request. Is Maria Corina more and more alone?
Marcos Salgado
The arrest warrant issued by a judge in terrorism cases against the former presidential candidate of the Venezuelan ultra-right, Edmundo Gonzalez, has been in force for more than 48 hours, but the tension does not increase. On the contrary, what continues to prevail is tranquility. But doubts are added.
Once any possibility of citizen indignation for the measure announced on Mondayhas been ruled out, so far there are no specific operations carried out by the Criminal and Criminalistic Investigations Corps (CICPC), under the Ministry of Interior, Justice and Peace, to find Gonzalez. Thecrimes charged are: usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobey laws, conspiracy and sabotage to damage systems and association to commit crimes.
On Tuesday, Gonzalez’s lawyer, Jose Vicente Haro, twice went up the hill where the former candidate’s home is located in the coquettish urbanization of Chula Vista, in the southeast of Caracas, to talk to the press that was discreetly standing guard outside the condominium.
There he assured that Gonzalez was not at his home, but his relatives would receive the authorities in case they showed up with a search warrant. Which, so far, has not happened. On the contrary, on Wednesday afternoon, Haro assured that the Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, would receive him on the 4th.
Nobody assumes
On the same day, the lawyer turned into spokesman of the former candidate assured that his client “had nothing to do in any way with the whole process of collecting the copies of the scrutiny minutes, the digitalization of those scrutiny minutes and the uploading of those scrutiny minutes in a web page”.
Thus, Gonzalez seems to distance himself from the referent Maria Corina Machado, and even from his own public appearances, as the one they both starred in front of the United Nations offices in Caracas, when he posed for photographers observing what they presented as copies of the tally sheets from the National Electoral Council machines.
The game is twofold. While his lawyer exonerates him, in the official account in X @EdmundoGU one can still read (at least until Wednesday afternoon) a post posted where he invites to consult the web page with the supposed digitalized tally sheets that, says the former candidate, “confirm our extraordinary triumph”.
Strictly speaking, the opposition’s monumental outburst against the strategy of the parallel tally sheets did not start now. A little more than a week after the elections, the representatives of the three parties that carried Gonzalez on the electoral ballot had already cleared responsibilities and clarified that they did not have the minutes. They also assured the Supreme Court of Justice that they did not know who uploaded the “information” in the questioned web.
A cyclical division of responsibilities that partly explains the minute by minute political tension in Venezuela and its true scope, beyond and beyond the chucuta epic of the cartelized media.
Dialogue of presidents?
While the search for Gonzalez was deflating, the Colombian Foreign Minister, Luis Murillo, announced that President Maduro was about to meet -via Internet- with his peers Gustavo Petro, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Colombia and Brazil have become the balance of diplomacy to temper the dissolute moves at the international level against the Venezuelan government. The White House’s measured positions are helping to lower tensions.Washington’s threats on the evaluation of new sanctions against Miraflores sound like little for those who had ambitions (again) to reach Nicolás Maduro’s arrival.
It is always difficult to guess what might happen. But it is no less certain that, at this moment, the internal climate in Venezuela is far from being one of tension. And even less of growing tension. Caracas seems much more attentive to the tropical storms and rains of every day in the afternoon than to the political sainete, although the international media is expecting something else.
*Argentine journalist of the founding team of Telesur. HispanTV correspondent in Venezuela, editor of Questiondigital.com. Analyst associated with the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE, estrategia.la).