With the President-elect protected by the European Union and Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela, the dictatorship suffers another defeat

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Six weeks after the 28-J elections, the organized crime group that pretends to continue wielding power with dictator Nicolas Maduro, has suffered another strategic defeat with Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia’s flight to Spain under the protection of the European Union. Twenty-First Century Socialism’s criminal objective of jailing, torturing, and possibly assassinating Venezuela’s President-Elect has failed. European democracies protect him until his swearing-in on 10 January of 2025 while Maria Corina Machado leads the civil resistance in Venezuela.

Elections under a dictatorship, planned by 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- for Venezuela in 2024, have now become a series of successive defeats on a path to end all dictatorships throughout the Americas. What was supposed to be another staging of the “vote-catching dictatorship” for Nicolas Maduro to continue in power at the service of Cuba and other continental dictatorships, has turned into a chain of chaos that started with the victory of Marina Corina Machado in the opposition’s primary elections where the “functional opposition” as one of the dictatorship’s main tools was eliminated.

Afterwards, 21st Century Socialism applied its mechanism to choose its opponents and disqualified Maria Corina Machado who, instead of letting that stop her, proposed Corina Yoris as her replacement and after she was also disqualified, the successive scheming of the government resulted was countered with the concentration of efforts for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia to be the opposition’s sole candidate. Then started the dictatorial strategy to instill fear in the population to prevent their voting, applying State-terrorism against the opposition’s leaders and the citizenry in general, and included the government’s threats to stain the country with a blood-bath.

I reiterate, this process has four phases; the first is the electoral campaign in which the opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, resoundingly defeated the dictatorship and was able to mobilize a nation who was fearless of the dictatorship, the second phase involved the actual voting and to have the capability to control the results of 28-J comfortably won with Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and 600,000 mini-commandos; the third phase involves the fight against the dictatorship’s narrative of a falsified victory, a phase we are now in with State-terrorism as a weapon of the dictatorship against the truth and the peaceful with civil resistance of the Venezuelan peoples; the fourth phase will be the transfer of power to President-Elect Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia this upcoming 10th of January.

Maduro and his group of transnational organized criminals have lost their battle of counterfeiting the results, a battle that has only shown them as criminals, they are losing the battle for the control of Venezuela through violence and State-terrorism because their flagrant crimes are known and are repudiated -in real time- by the whole world. Their crimes are so evident that they have lost the support and unconditional backing of the Para-Dictatorial governments of Lula from Brazil, Petro from Colombia, and Lopez Obrador from Mexico and have just lost their decreed persecution, imprisonment, and death mandated against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and Maria Corina Machado.

The methodology of 21st Century Socialism dictatorships to indefinitely stay in power is the same as Cuba’s dictatorship and consists of eliminating those adversaries that are perceived as a threat. The elimination comes about through harassment, persecution, assassination of reputation, recruitment, imprisonment, torture, exile, or death. The now so-called 21st Century Socialism, which is Castroism of the past century turned into Castrochavism ever since Hugo Chavez rescued Cuba’s dictatorship, has filled the region’s history with this agenda.

In this context -that is not politics but organized crime- Gonzalez Urrutia’s flight from Venezuela is a new defeat for the dictatorship because the dictatorship’s strategy to arrest him to then be able to negotiate his freedom and therefore change the prevailing electoral defeat scenario and the turning over of the government for the liberation of the jailed -as it has always done- will not work. The new scenario is the President-Elect protected by the European Union and the world’s democracies, removed from the claws of Castrochavist crime and free until his swearing-in as President of Venezuela.

Maria Corina Machado’s declaration certifies the defeat of the dictatorship, she declared: “On 10 January of 2025 the President-Elect Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia will be sworn-in as the Constitutional President of Venezuela and as the Commander-In-Chief of the National Armed Forces. Let this be clear to all; Edmundo will fight from afar along with others in our diaspora and I will continue fighting from here, together with all of you. Serenity, courage, and resolve.! Venezuelans our fight IS TO THE END and victory is ours.”

The Venezuelan people are winning the fight for the freedom of all America. The rest is just the narrative of dictatorships and those of service to them.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas