What runs down the street on this new electoral eve in Venezuela are questions and distrust. Chavismo has hurriedly summoned for May 25 the regional and parliamentary elections. The goal is to finish passing the July 28 page, that huge crack that opened in the Venezuelan political crisis. Then the opposition denounced that more than 80% of the minutes granted him a resounding triumph, which did not prevent Nicolás Maduro from being a winner without showing the evidence. With these premises, the pollsters estimate one of the lowest participations in recent history. The influx would barely around 30%.
The unitary platform and the sectors that orbit around María Corina Machado, with a leadership backed in primary and with their own weight, have called to abstention. Another group of leaders, headed by Henrique Capriles – tabilized to participate, in a surprising way, he says – and Manuel Rosales insist on challenging Chavismo with the votes, although they coincide with the other sector in the diagnosis on what happened in the presidentials last year.
“If we vote, nothing assures us that they do not steal us again, but if we do not vote, it is for sure to keep everything.” This is how Juan Requesens responds, candidate for the Miranda Government, a key territory that includes part of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas. The politician is distributing along flying street with his photo the minimum resources of a candidate. But people recognize it, above all, because they were imprisoned in the helicoid prison and three others in house arrest.
Requesens is taking a tour of Colinas de Bello Monte, in the Baruta municipality of Caracas, a middle -class opposition sector where in other years violent battles of protesters against the government of Nicolás Maduro were fought, severely repressed by the security forces. Those same streets today have little movement, there is no trace of the barricades and the pellets. There are people in the bakeries drinking coffee at the end of the afternoon. In the conversation the subject of the elections was not until the energetic requirements enters. “What needs to be done then?” The question of a neighbor calls the requirements for the umpteenth time about “the importance of recovering the Government of Miranda for the opposition,” makes it a decade ago headed by Capriles.
In another letter to convince people, draw the “apocalyptic” version that abstention makes this municipality, this municipality, of the most opponents of the country, ends in the hands of the PSUV for the first time in its history. “What guarantees are that if you earn the governorate?” “None,” he says. “Living in Venezuela is living without guarantees, but as long as I can fight I will do it.” Almost everyone ends up nodding.
“But that is not by María Corina?” After advancing together with the presidential presidentials of July 28, the different opposition groups have divided again. Those who participate do so in worse conditions. The candidates are going to explain why you have to vote, little matter their proposals they have. “We are the same people who voted for Edmundo (González), but we have differences about what needs to be done in these elections. We believe that other mechanisms to undermine institutions and promote change must be sought.” Thus responds to suspicions. Some seem to have convinced this week that Machado also spoke with citizens for their social networks. The leader made a new express call anus voting on May 25 to boycott Chavismo’s plans. On the other hand, from the Government, the Minister of Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, has accused the leader, who has been in the underground for nine months, to plan violent actions for the day of the elections.
That is the environment in which it will be voted next Sunday. For the opposition candidate, the difference in agendas should not be used to make accusations of betrayal, one of the narratives that has penetrated the sector that is participating, according to which the concurrence to the polls gives stability to Chavismo. “In Venezuela there is nothing normalized,” he tells El País, while walking blocks up and down to ask for votes. On the street he has crossed with people who sent him food and books when he was imprisoned, something that speaks little in his campaign. “We cannot stop fighting on 28, but we cannot paralyze everything for 28,” he says in reference to the results of the presidentials of July 28. “I think that the biggest challenge is to understand that we are in a complex environment, that we have to give institutional fights to conquer institutional spaces and that when we have retired from everything we have lost communicating vessels with those actors with whom we have to negotiate the transition,” he continues.
Priority in the transition
Requesens is 36 years old, began in politics with the belligerence of the university student leadership and finished training in the Pablo Iglesias del PSOE Foundation. Thus, he became a deputy of the 2015 National Assembly, conquered by the opposition and then discouraged by the Government and its absolute control of the powers, an episode that now interprets in a different way: “I recognize that it is very easy postanalizebut in 2015 the problem was to think that if we won the election, we could go against everything, “he says.” The Government entrenched and used the institutional mechanisms to violate the Constitution. That is why their logic is not democratic, because they understand that their survival is worth more than democratic principles. ”In their opinion, despite the background, the opposition deputies who may be elected now have a golden opportunity to“ stand on the stretch and tell the truths to the government. ”“ From there you can undermine the power and consolidate a force, ”he insists.
On August 7, 2018, intelligence services went to look for him at his mother’s house. They took him imprisoned and accused him of being part of a frustrated plan to kill Maduro in an attack with drones during a military parade. He was tortured and exposed in denigrating conditions in a video filtered by the authorities. With great delays and irregularities he had a trial in which he was sentenced to eight years in jail. While he was imprisoned, he says now, he always thought he would be released with a change of government. On October 18, 2023, in the midst of negotiations between Venezuela and the United States that led to Barbados agreements, he was granted freedom without major explanations and Maduro continued – he continues – in power.
“They gave me an pardon for Barbados negotiations. But that is as fragile as with what foot the government is raised one day. Every day I go out with fear, with panic, but I have to insist.” Requesens ensures that, for the moment, he has put reconciliation and political transition in Venezuela above justice. “I spent five years imprisoned, four years without seeing my children and I didn’t want to go for the head of those who did that. The one who grabbed me, the one who tortured me, the one who watched me, the one who recorded me is not my problem. And it is not about forgiving. But my priorities are now the reconciliation and that we achieve a transition.” For next Sunday four scenarios are raised and a task for the day after. “On May 25, they can re -grab me or disable again, I can win and do not recognize me, I can win and to recognize it, and I can lose for abstention. But my role is to go out the next day to repeat everything I have said now.”
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