Friday, February 13, 2015

Rachel Boothroy — Venezuelan Opposition Leaders call for Regime Change and “National Transition Agreement”

Three leading figures of the Venezuelan opposition have released a statement amounting to a demand for regime change and the establishment of a transitional government in the country. 
Entitled “The Call for a National Transition Agreement,” the statement was circulated this Wednesday and appeals to Venezuelans to unite behind a national plan aimed at supplanting the current socialist administration of President Nicolas Maduro, elected on April 14th 2013 with approximately 51% of the vote. 
Its signatories include currently jailed leader of the Popular Will Party, Leopoldo Lopez, former National Assembly Legislator, Maria Corina Machado and current Mayor of the Metropolitan Capital District of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma.… 
All of the signatories are linked to the violent guarimbas or barricades which began in February 2014, when violent protestors and paramilitaries blocked the streets for several months in response to calls by Lopez and Machado to force the “exit” of the Maduro government.… 
The publication of the statement comes just a day before the first anniversary of the barricades and represents a clear violation of the country’s Bolivarian Constitution, which only allows for the removal of the elected President of the Republic via a national referendum or indictment by the Supreme Court of Justice. 
In the text, the current government is described as a “failed” “corrupt” and “inefficient” regime, made up of an “elite of no more 100 people” who have pilfered public funds “which could have been used for the benefit of all”. It also states that Venezuela is on the brink of a “humanitarian crisis” whilst the Maduro government is “delegitimised” and in its “terminal phase”. 
The move comes amidst a mounting economic war against the country’s socialist revolution which has seen private businesses hoarding essential goods in order to cause public unrest, as well as a fresh round of US sanctions imposed on Venezuelan officials earlier in February.…All three of the politicians to have signed the document participated in the 2002 attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez.
President Maduro has charged that Washington's hand is behind the plan for regime change in Venezuela and the placing in power of a neoliberal government favorable to the United States. Washington recently imposed sanctions on Venezuela.

2 comments:

Peter Pan said...

It sure looks like President Maduro is doomed. Venezuelan socialism was based on what Hugo Chavez believed it to be - and now he's gone.

Magpie said...

I can't say anything about the other two guys, but Antonio Ledezma had been mentioned in relation to all sorts of corruption cases.

Many years ago he was the DF Governor. By all accounts, he made a "killing" back then (as far as journalists could ascertain, a "killing" only in the financial sense).