In 2022 Juan Guaidó will remain as leader of the opposition Parliament and as Acting President for the fourth year in a row. The Venezuelan leader was ratified in his two positions, after the first extraordinary meeting that Parliament held last Monday. The delegated commission of the National Assembly (AN), elected in 2015 by an opposition majority, approved the partial reform of the Transitional Statute, a constitutional instrument, which gives continuity to Guaidó in his functions as well as to Parliament. In the vote of the first meeting of the delegated commission, political organizations such as Fracción 16J, Encuentro Ciudadano and Causa R voted in favor of Guaidó, and they even consider that the bill presented limits the functions of the president
in charge. The second discussion will take place on December 30, and in theory, the reform of the statute should be ready before next January 4, the date on which the renewal of the position and its inauguration is planned.
The continuity for the fourth consecutive year of Guaidó at the head of the interim government and the opposition Parliament has been strewn with obstacles and controversies on the part of his own opposition colleagues, who have been withdrawing their support because they consider that the objectives set in 2019 by the opposition 38 years old to depose Nicolas Maduro of power have not been fulfilled. His detractors have tried for a year to remove him from the interim presidency without proposing anything in return to fight against the Chavista regime.
“Today Parliament clearly has a duty to protect, to safeguard, our Constitution. There will be no power vacuum in Venezuela product of the absence of a legitimate election in 2018, product of having hijacked the vote in 2020, by Jorge Rodríguez, who today simply hijacks powers, “said Guaidó in a video that he shared on his social networks. In the same way, he acknowledged that his Government has made mistakes, but that it intends to correct them with this project. Guaidó, an engineer by profession, serves as interim president attached to articles 233 and 333 of the Constitution.
Andrés Velásquez, secretary of Causa R, has denounced that the G4, which brings together the four main and most voted parties: Democratic Action, Popular Will, Primero Justicia and Un Nuevo Tiempo, “intend to strengthen cohabitation with Maduro by proposing the reform of the statute that limits the powers to Guaidó. The deputy Delsa Solorzano, secretary of Encuentro Ciudadano, also denounces that the continuity reform takes away Guaido’s powers: “The parties should not condition the continuity of the president in charge.”
However, Guaidó’s continuity generates further friction within the opposition and the sector faces criticism from opposition heavyweight figures who do not support him. The former deputy Julio Borges, who served as Guaidó’s foreign relations commissioner, said on December 5 that the figure of the “interim government” must “completely disappear” because its objective has been “distorted.” His comment further dynamited the opposition.
Maria Corina Machado, leader of Vente Venezuela, who has criticized Guaidó’s exercise as president of the interim government, rejects the continuity of Guaidó. The former deputy insists that Guaidó must resign and call a primary to elect and renew the opposition leadership. Machado insists that he sees in the National Assembly “the contradiction of those who vote in favor of the continuity of the interim government and in the same act, when modifying the Statute for the Transition, a majority votes for the liquidation of the interim presidency.”
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In his view, the G4 “killed the interim presidency. With this modification of the Statute, instead of an interim president, there would be a G4 governing board with Guaidó. Power will be exercised by a NA that does not meet, does not supervise and does not control. The opposition lost control of the seat of the Legislative Power when Parliament was installed in January 2021 chavista, after having won the December 2020 elections in which they took control of the premises. Immediately after the Chavista deputies occupied the headquarters, the opposition had to legislate in squares and due to the coronavirus pandemic they have met on platforms such as Zoom.
The two-time presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, surfs the same wave of criticism that María Corina Machado does. The leader of Primero Justicia, affirms that Guaidó’s position expired in 2019, the same year in which he took office, for not having complied with the cessation of Maduro’s usurpation as promised on January 23 when he was sworn in in front of hundreds of thousands of people in Caracas.
Maduro criticized the decision of the delegate commission that supports the continuity of Guaidó and expressed that “in the country of Narnia (to refer to the imaginary of the opposition) they have no limit in political stupidity. Keep up the goofy president. ” Both Maduro and Guaidó tried in August to smooth over their rough edges in a dialogue that began in Mexico. However, Chavismo kicked the dialogue table when he was extradited to the US from Cape Verde Alex Saab, Maduro’s front man.
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