The expulsion from Colombia of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, clouded the international summit on Venezuela convened today in Bogotá by Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Incidentally, the episode has highlighted the main reason why anti-Chavismo has not managed to raise its head during the 24 years that Chavismo has been in power: the opposition division.
Until last January, Guaidó was considered interim president by the opposition to Chavismo and recognized by fifty countries. The decision of the majority of the anti-Chavista parties to end this parallel government that did not achieve the objective of democratizing the country, stripped Guaidó of the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the entire opposition and led him to star in this Monday’s episode, when appeared by surprise in Bogotá, at the risk of blowing up the summit.
The leader of the Voluntad Popular party was unable to meet with anyone because he was escorted onto a plane bound for Miami by Colombian immigration authorities.
Petro was not willing for the former president in charge to contaminate the efforts he has been making since he took power last August so that the government and the opposition finally find a negotiated solution to the Venezuelan crisis. “Obviously a political sector wanted to disturb the free development of the international conference on Venezuela,” Petro tweeted on Tuesday.
There are three million Venezuelans in Colombia, of which 1.3 million are in a situation as irregular as that of Guaidó, who, upon arriving in Miami, denounced that the Colombian government intended to deport him to Venezuela and that, finally, he was forced to leave the country with direction to USA
“He just goes in with his passport and asks for asylum. She would have gladly offered herself. He doesn’t have to enter the country illegally. He was offered a transit permit, he was not deported back to his country and with the permission of the US he flew to that country,†Petro tweeted.
Subsequently, Leyva indicated that Guaidó had left Colombia at the direction of Washington and said that the ticket to Miami “was provided by the United States.” The minister assured yesterday that the US had an “interest” in the meeting being “absolutely transparent and naturally completely successful.”
The success of the conference on Venezuela, which is attended by 18 countries -among them Spain and the US-, plus the EU, will be seen in the coming weeks. The immediate objective is for the Venezuelan government and opposition to return to the negotiating table in Mexico.
Petro, promoter of the summit, met last Thursday at the White House with President Joe Biden and proposed to lift the sanctions against Chavismo in exchange for next year’s elections being held with democratic guarantees.
“America cannot be a space of sanctions, it has to be a space of freedoms, of democracy,” Petro said Tuesday at the opening of the meeting, at the same time that he asked for “guarantees so that the Venezuelan people decide freely and sovereignly what they want.” The Colombian leader also wants Venezuela to be readmitted into the Inter-American Human Rights System.
At the entrance to the conference, which takes place in the San Carlos palace in Bogotá, the headquarters of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, also spoke in favor of lifting sanctions if the regime of Nicolás Maduro takes democratic steps. “It is clear that a process of democratic normalization will have to be accompanied by a gradual lifting of sanctions, it all consists in knowing when and how,” Borrell said.
