“Maduro has to go”

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado This Thursday he urged Nicolás Maduro and his government to negotiate an exit from power before January 10 of 2025, then, he warned, his situation will be “better” than if he “clings” to the position and is sworn in on that date for a new six-year term, after his controversial re-election on July 28.

«One thing is a negotiation before and another thing is a negotiation after January 10 – when the new presidential period begins. For the regime, if it clings to force, the situation will be substantially more complex from that day on,” Machado said in an interview with Efe, in which he reiterated that Maduro committed “fraud” in the elections.

He assured that the largest anti-Chavista bloc – the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) – is “doing everything that needs to be done to create all the pressure«, inside and outside the country, so that in January their candidate is sworn in as president-elect, Edmundo González Urrutia, exiled in Spain since September 8.

María Corina Machado: «I feel that today the signs are increasingly firmer»

Although he considers that there is still time for a negotiation with Maduro, whose victory is not recognized by many countries, he clarified that these conversations must revolve around “a change of regime” to put an end to Chavismo that has governed since 1999 and that defends its victory at the polls, supported by all the country’s institutions.

«I feel that today the signals are increasingly firmer and clearer from the allies of the world, from the democratic allies, in the sense that Maduro has to go and that their time is up and For their own good they have to accept a transition to democracy“, held.

In his opinion, Maduro enjoys “very little” support within the security forces, civil and military, while “there are many actors close to the regime’s environment, or the regime itself, who are aware that the later it is “The negotiation is going to be more difficult for them.”

«Without a doubt, after January 10, the scenario changes completely. So, I do believe that the incentives are there for them to understand that the sooner they accept the irreversibility of political change, your situation may be better«he insisted.