Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that “it is time” for a transitional government to be installed in Venezuela “with the inclusion of all” and for a general amnesty to be granted in that country, as an alternative to the political crisis in the face of a possible attack by the United States. “The government of Nicolas Maduro must understand that the response to external aggression is not only military enlistment, but a democratic revolution,” the president said in his statement.
Petro is thus responding specifically to the news that Caracas confiscated the passport of Cardinal Baltazar Porras, one of Venezuela’s most important ecclesiastical figures, as he planned to travel to Spain. “It is with more democracy that a country defends itself, not with more ineffective repression,” underlined the president who, since November, has put on the table the idea of a transitional government. “I am opposed to solutions which are not negotiated and which attempt to make one sector triumph over the extermination of the other,” he declared at the time.
Maduro’s siege has strengthened in recent months due to U.S. actions in the Caribbean Sea. Since September, Washington has attacked several ships believed to be transporting drugs to North America and accuses the Venezuelan president of being the mastermind of these operations. American Donald Trump said Maduro was the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking, and increased the Venezuelan’s reward to $50 million. Military action against Venezuela, whether by air or land, would directly affect Colombia, which already hosts more than 2.8 million Venezuelan migrants. Bogotá does not recognize the results of elections held in 2024 because the electoral registers have not been made public, even though it maintains diplomatic relations with Maduro.
In this context, Petro urged Trump and Maduro to seek a negotiated solution, even with proposals that have sparked controversy. The latest was the creation of the National Front, a political pact in force in Colombia in the mid-20th century, in which conservatives and liberals shared power every four years for more than a decade. The model, according to the Colombian project, would operate “for a period that would build confidence” and would then hold free elections.
Regarding this proposal, Petro acknowledged that “some people in the opposition liked it and others in the government didn’t like it”, and therefore he proposed that the idea be voted on in a plebiscite or made a declaration before the United Nations. Today, with his usual references to the colonial era, the president says: “The homeland of Bolivar must not be invaded by foreigners, nor by empty speeches, nor by prisons of souls. Bolivar’s homeland is defended with more democracy and sovereignty.
Petro’s new statements come a few hours after the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony to opponent María Corina Machado in Oslo (Norway). Although the politician was unable to attend the event, the Norwegian Nobel Committee confirmed that she had left Venezuela. He The Wall Street Journalciting U.S. officials, says Machado left the country, where he had been living in hiding for a year, on a boat that left Venezuela’s west coast for the Caribbean island of Curacao.
The Colombian president has been very critical of the Venezuelan opposition, which is open to a possible military offensive aimed at overthrowing the Maduro regime. A day after the Nobel Prize announcement in October – Petro barely congratulated her – she echoed a letter Machado sent in 2018 to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking for the “support needed to generate regime change.”
“What I don’t understand and I want you to explain to me is: why are you asking for the help of a criminal against humanity, with an international arrest warrant, to bring democracy to Venezuela? What does it mean that the Norwegian people, who award this prize, encourage this type of global alliance which can only be an alliance of barbarity and war, and not of peace?” Petro then questioned.
Regardless, the Colombian president explicitly condemns any military action against Venezuela, an issue that has further strained relations between Bogota and Washington. Just last week, the Colombian president called the airspace closure ordered by Trump over the neighboring country “illegal” and a “colonialist threat,” which many said anticipated a possible military air deployment, although so far this has not happened. Both Maduro and Trump say they are keeping the avenues for dialogue open, following a telephone conversation between the two in late November.
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