Negotiations over Nicolás Maduro’s departure to continue despite Edmundo González’s exile

The abrupt departure of Edmundo González Urrutia from Venezuela has not paralyzed high-level talks that seek to convince Nicolás Maduro that his best option is to leave power. The consensus that the current Venezuelan president was defeated at the polls by the opposition is almost absolute, and the leftist powers of Latin America and the United States are working to get Chavismo to sit down at a dialogue table and recognize the evidence. The parties were not counting on the fact that the candidate who virtually won the elections would suddenly go into exile in Spain, but 48 hours after the shock it caused, they remain firmly convinced that the talks must continue and that there is still a lot of time left until January 10, when the new president is scheduled to take office.

The Colombian government, which has played an important role in the negotiations by the express wish of President Gustavo Petro, learned that González had decided to request asylum in Spain just three hours before the opposition leader boarded a Spanish Air Force plane that was waiting for him in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. “The old man [González is 75 years old] is leaving today,” began to circulate on WhatsApp. The possibility that he would decide to leave Venezuela, worried about his own life and that of his family following harassment by the Chavista justice system, which had opened a case against him and charged him with five crimes, was on everyone’s minds. But his lawyer had denied it twice in the last week, and that option seemed to have been cast aside. But advised by his wife and daughters, he finally took the step.

María Corina Machado, the opposition’s figurehead and the person who chose González as her substitute when she was disqualified by Chavismo from participating in the elections, understood the decision, according to sources closest to her. However, she did not think it was a good move for the cause, as she believed that it would open a crack in the strategy they had designed together, which involved González donning the presidential sash at the beginning of 2025. In public, Machado has said that González will return and take office as president, because that is what Venezuelans have decided at the polls.

Mistakes of the past

Privately, the opposition admits that González’s departure is a setback that forces them to rethink things, but they remain optimistic. After many years without direction, the opposition, grouped around Machado, has shown that it has learned from past mistakes and has developed special skills in a political context as complex as the one created by Chavismo. For example, Machado’s decision to cede all her political capital to an unknown figure like Edmundo González worked, as demonstrated at the polls. “We will overcome this,” say Machado’s cadres.

Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero played a role in González’s departure. The current leader of Spain’s government, Pedro Sánchez, was aware of this fact and had given his support. Chavismo accepted the proposal and tasked Maduro’s most trusted political operators, the siblings Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, with handling the negotiation, according to government sources. González did not agree to sign a document that would have meant recognizing the ruling of the High Court of Justice granting victory to Chavismo. Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, was aware of the conversations.

Forty days after the elections, morale is low in Maduro’s entourage, according to sources familiar with his inner circle. The international discredit of Chavismo and the almost absolute conviction within both sympathetic and unsympathetic countries that the opposition won the elections, and by a considerable margin at that, have taken their toll.

According to these same sources, Maduro refuses to acknowledge this reality. The second circle of Chavista power, made up of ministers, governors, mayors and leaders of the PSUV, the official party, is not blind to what has happened, but they maintain that to step aside would be to “betray the Bolivarian revolution.” None of them has publicly distanced themselves from the official story: that Maduro was the winner, although few believe it literally.

Avoiding a martyr

At this point, those who agreed with González’s departure do not see it as a form of surrender or as a favor to Chavismo, but rather as a way of protecting a man who has no real desire for power, unlike Machado, and who has no obligation to become a martyr for the cause. In addition, they wanted to avoid “a bloodbath” that could have been unleashed by his arrest and imprisonment.

“It is not an interruption of the negotiations, there are still many months ahead, a lot of time left,” say those involved in the talks. Petro’s entourage also does not believe that this is the end. Is the common front of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico that is negotiating with Chavismo still standing? “Of course,” said a source in Bogotá.

The strategy must change. In any case, it has not been very productive so far: Maduro has cancelled meetings with Petro and the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. All three allied countries, governed by leftist leaders, must now rethink their approach to the crisis.

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