Washington was wondering, Saturday January 27, what action to take towards Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela. In Caracas, the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) had confirmed the day before that the opponent Maria Corina Machado could not register her candidacy for the next presidential election. In a statement, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the Venezuelan high court’s decision a “very worrying”.
Dubbed opposition candidate for the primaries of October 22, 2023, Mme Machado, 56, has since been predicted to be the winner by all independent polling institutes. But the TSJ confirmed Friday that she was ineligible and banned from public office for fifteen years, in particular for administrative irregularities.
“The regime has decided to put an end to the Barbados agreement, but the fight to win democracy through free and transparent elections is not over,” reacted for his part Mme Machado on his account 2023 in Bridgetown, capital of the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Around thirty arrests
Gerardo Blyde, head of the opposition delegation, also denounced ” a violation “ of this agreement, specifying that the opposition “did not leave the negotiating table”. “The Barbados agreement is the most important political document negotiated in the twenty years of political crisis”insisted Mr. Blyde, asking for help “of Macron, of [Gustavo] Petro, from Lula », the French, Colombian and Brazilian presidents, to save it.
The day after the signing of the agreement, the Americans announced a partial and temporary relief of the oil sanctions imposed against Venezuela. Washington had conditioned these measures on the lifting of the ineligibility of several Venezuelan opponents and the release of political prisoners.
Thursday, even before the TSJ’s decision, Nicolas Maduro declared in Caracas that the Barbados agreement was “mortally wounded”, by denouncing the existence of several ongoing plots to assassinate him. For ten days, more than thirty people, civilians and soldiers, including members of Vente Venezuela, the political movement of Mme Machado, were in fact arrested. Venezuelan authorities say they are investigating “five conspiracies” which would be hatched by the opposition, the American intelligence services and the Colombian army.
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