Reaching a turning point in Venezuela
Releasing the country’s highest-profile political prisoner,Lopez, from jail — even if only into house arrest — is a first big win for the country
It wasn’t quite the triumphal, Nelson Mandela-style homecoming his supporters had been hoping for. At 3am (local time) on July 8, with no previous warning, Leopoldo Lopez was secretly moved from solitary confinement in a military-run prison near Caracas into house arrest. After serving three-and-a-half years of a 14-year sentence on what are widely seen as trumped-up charges, Venezuela’s highestprofile political prisoner — and its most popular politician — was free to hug his small children in his own home.
The news sent shockwaves through a crisis-struck country. The move came on the 99th day of a raucous protest movement that has paralysed much of the country. Marches, rallies and road closures have become part of the daily routine as citizens push back against what is now an openly dictatorial government.
The rare — indeed, unprecedented — sign of flexibility towards the opposition opens up the tantalising possibility that the regime of President Nicolas Maduro is, at long last, preparing to launch a serious, high-stakes negotiation with its critics.
Key here is the involvement of former Spanish prime minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, who is credited with brokering the move to send Lopez home from prison. Releasing Lopez from jail — even if only into house arrest rather than full freedom — is Rodrguez Zapatero’s first big win in Venezuela. It has dramatically raised his stature, establishing his mediation track as the forum for negotiation between the sides.
The government has called a July 30 vote for a “Constituent Assembly” to rewrite the constitution. The opposition — which was never consulted about convening such an assembly in the first place — has decided to boycott that election, and for good reason. The election rules proposed were openly, brazenly designed to favour the government.
Under Venezuela’s peculiar constitutional traditions, a Constituent Assembly has unlimited powers that cannot be hemmed in by any previously constituted authority. The dangers of this approach are obvious. With the opposition boycotting, the country now faces the prospect of giving absolute legal authority to a government that is loathed by 75 per cent of citizens.
The first order of business for Zapatero, then, must be to find some face-saving way for the government to back off from this deeply destabilising Constituent Assembly proposal and to pledge its commitment to existing legality. That would have to include finally accepting the legitimacy of the legislative branch, where the opposition won a two-thirds supermajority in free and fair elections in December 2015. In return, the opposition would agree to dial down the protest movement that has rendered the country almost completely ungovernable for the last 100 days.
The broad outlines of a grand bargain to pull Venezuela back from the brink of all-out civil conflict are, in other words, already visible. The road ahead will not be easy, and many in the opposition have profound doubts about whether Zapatero — who seemed so pliant for so long — has the chops to persuade the government to accept painful concessions.
The likely alternatives to this compromise path are clear: Either an open-ended Cuban-style dictatorship or all-out civil conflict, with the military eventually stepping in to referee a political solution. So we had better hope that Rodrguez Zapatero has what it takes. Caracas Chronicles Washington Post.