The resounding failure of María Corina Machado and the opposition labyrinth in Venezuela

Marcos Salgado

January 10 passed in Venezuela. And the only thing that came was the 11th. Just as Pedro Carmona had his 13th, in 2002, in his very brief presidency during the coup against Hugo Chavez, former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had his 10th. Nothing happened of what he promised and he quickly added to the endless list of unfulfilled promises to his already tired and distrustful followers.

So big was the size of the defeat, that at the end of the 10th, while Nicolás Maduro was receiving in the Miraflores Palace the high-level delegations from Russia and China, Edmundo made a speech in which he again named María Corina Machado, whom with a generosity that had vanished in the last weeks, he qualified as “our leader”. Is Edmundo trying to share the failure? It seems so.

And it is not for less, in fact, the failure of the strategy (if there really was any strategy at all) for the 10E is especially Machado’s. She was the one who set the 9E as the date for the elections. She was the one who set January 9 as the key date, and called to mobilize in four points of Caracas, which by midday she unified into one, on Élice Street in Chacao. Not a square, not a park, not an avenue. A street, with a scarce 190 meters from corner to corner.

Get on my bike

There MCM appeared and after an inconsequential and scattered speech, in which he kept promising the unrealizable, he left on the same motorcycle in which he had arrived, in search of absolute protagonism in the news. Thus, an incident that his group Vente Venezuela described as “kidnapping” and “disappearance” took place and that all the “serious” media of the world took for real without any verification.

When the news was just starting to trend, it was over. The attempts of MCM and his people (in the government they point to Magali Meda, who is in asylum in the Argentinean embassy in Caracas) to refloat it the following day were unsuccessful. This, plus the brutal deflation of Edmundo. The man not only did not get on a plane to Venezuela, but did not even show himself in public in the Dominican Republic, where he was supposed to be.

Thus, the two great defeated men gave all the headlines to President Nicolás Maduro, who was sworn in at the National Assembly, led a military parade at Fort Tiuna and then a massive popular party in front of the Miraflores Palace. Yes, it must be said, to those who like to measure politics by street mobilizations: there were more people in Miraflores than in Élice Street.

Donald to the rescue

The only lifesaver that María Corina and Edmundo received in the shipwreck was a post by Donald Trump, incoming president of the United States. There he described Gonzalez as “president elect” and -kindly- fixed in “hundreds of thousands” those who demonstrated against “the regime”. He closed with a meager claim: “they must not be harmed and must remain safe and alive”. What he will do after 20E, not a word.

As long as the Trump administration does not decide how it will deal with the relationship with Nicolás Maduro, the political and media strategies will not be aligned and everyone will play their own game. Like Álvaro Uribe, who called for an international intervention in Venezuela. Trump already failed once with the Guaidó strategy, largely because the opposition could not move or mobilize inside borders at that time.

Now, the opposition discredit is even worse. Guaidó at least self-jurament in a massive public act and in Caracas. It is impossible that Trump’s entourage does not see this. Perhaps waiting for signals from the White House, the rest of the referents of the dissolving opposition remain more or less silent, leaving Edmundo and MCM even more alone. It only remains for them to get out of Maria Corina and shuffle and give again.