Nicolás Maduro assures Lula that there will be elections in Venezuela after June

Nicolás Maduro said at the VIII Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that there will be elections during the second half of 2024. The date was established in the Barbados agreements and the commitment to hold them was witnessed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian Presidency reported. The announcement came after the two presidents held a bilateral meeting within the summit. Maduro affirmed that in 2024 there will be “totally reliable and transparent elections” in Venezuela.

According to Venezuelan legislation, it is the National Electoral Council (CNE) that calls elections in Venezuela, and it has not yet taken that step. The ruling party mobilized allied sectors to propose various schedules to hold the elections, and this Friday it delivered a document with 27 possible dates, based on different criteria. The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, acknowledged receipt of the proposals and said that they would begin to analyze them. Electoral specialists have warned that, technically, there needs to be a period of at least six months between the date the elections are called and the day of the vote itself.

“This year Venezuela is holding its 31st election in 25 years. I believe that Venezuela has one of the highest rates of electoral and consultative processes in the electoral history over the last three decades on our continent, and in the world. Whenever it has been necessary, according to the Constitution, elections have been held,” Amoroso said.

The conditions under which the last presidential elections were held in Venezuela in May 2018 — an early date that Maduro himself chose, and which saw a large part of the opposition candidates ruled out of running due to disqualifications and had no qualified international observation missions — led to a win for Chavismo, but undermined the legitimacy of the re-elected government after the decision by several of the world’s democracies not to recognize a process they considered flawed.

Maduro has asked CELAC and also the United Nations — whose Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, was present at the summit — to send their observation missions, despite the fact that days ago he expelled the teams from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Venezuela is preparing for totally reliable and transparent elections, with an electoral system that I would like CELAC to know about and be able to broadcast beyond manipulation, misrepresentation, and lies,” he said.

In CELAC, Maduro has found a space to return to international dialogue, after several years of isolation due to the country’s authoritarian drift. And Lula Da Silva has been a mediator in the latest diplomatic spat between Venezuela and its neighbor Guyana over the Essequibo region.

The pair met in December in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — headquarters of the pro tempore presidency of CELAC — to de-escalate a conflict that had been created after a referendum in Venezuela was held to approve the annexation of the disputed territory. There, Venezuela and Guyana agreed not to threaten each other or use force to resolve the dispute, although days later there were mobilizations of troops and military equipment along the border.

The exchange of prisoners with the United States was also completed at the summit as part of the direct negotiations between Caracas and Washington. In the Caribbean island country, Colombian businessman Alex Saab, who was being prosecuted for alleged money laundering stemming from the Venezuelan government’s corruption, was handed over to Venezuela and has now been named an official in Maduro’s cabinet.

The date of the elections has become a critical issue in the latest steps in the negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. But several agreements prior to the elections have collapsed in recent months, in which Chavismo has increased the persecution of dissidents — with the arrest of activists and political leaders — and has decided to block the candidacy of the main opposition leader, María Corina Machado. The government has resorted to a ruling from the Supreme Court, which has gone beyond constitutional precepts. Chavismo is trying to set up elections in which it cannot lose, although 85% of Venezuelans want a change of government and Maduro has an approval rating of less than 20%.

According to the Brazilian Presidency, the meeting between Lula and Maduro also touched on the issue of Guyana, where the Brazilian president had made a stop before attending the summit. Also discussed were the million-dollar debt that Venezuela has with Brazil, the intensification of trade between the two countries, and the joint fight against illegal mining in the Yanomami indigenous territory, on both sides of the border.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition