Venezuela after the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina: what now?

The energetic speech delivered by the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, during last Wednesday’s ceremony, left no room for ambiguity. He candidly described Maduro’s regime as a brutal and authoritarian state and urged the Chavista leader to leave the presidency. Norway, which has already played a mediating role in conversations between the opposition and the Maduro government, has now become the European beacon of the Venezuelan cause, in the face of the silence of other governments. But that is not enough.

After an intense week, the question is whether this award will actually facilitate the transition and what steps can be taken now to capitalize on this moment and accelerate change in Venezuela.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize brought together in Oslo, in addition to Machado and González Urrutia, a large part of his team. Working meetings to finalize the plans multiplied on the seventh floor of the Grand Hôtel, which became its headquarters for a few days.

ABC raised this issue with some people who attended these meetings. One of them is the elected president of Venezuela, Edmundo González Urrutia, who, according to the minutes prepared by the opposition, won the elections of July 28, 2024 with 68% of the votes. A month later, harassed by the regime, he was forced to go into exile in Spain. He has now reunited with Machado.

Preparing a government to replace Maduro

For the president-elect, the next step after the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize is to “prepare the government phase. Put into practice the plans that we have already well designed, well studied, well oiled to carry them out when the government (of Maduro) leaves. “All this is written,” he explains. “What we are going to do in the first days, even in the first hours, is written. And we’re going to implement it now.”

When asked if María Corina will undertake an international tour to gather support – the opposition leader has received numerous invitations – the president-elect assures that what he is currently doing is “working internally to form the government, forming work teams”. In this sense, he specifies that “when we are established, the question of foreign tours will be discussed. “Now the main thing is to devote ourselves to forming the government.” According to González Urrutia, the goal is to have “a clear and solid structure for when Maduro leaves power” in Venezuela.

For his part, Magalli Medahead of the ConVzla command and one of the five members of Machado’s team who had to take refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas to avoid arrest, believes that the next step now is to continue the strategy that is underway and which consists of “maintaining maximum pressure so that a regime that stole the elections hands over power.” We Venezuelans have respected everything that was established in the restoration of democracy. human rights violations – don’t want to hand over power,” he says.

Continue with external and internal pressure

The plan Meda is referring to is called “Force Pressure,” and it is being developed “in all directions: international and internal pressure.” He particularly emphasizes this last point: “The internal organization of Venezuelans is very important to generate all possible pressure for them to cede power. By which route? Many opportunities were offered to them. There have been processes in which individuals have sat down, but they are not willing,” he says in reference to the numerous negotiation attempts that Maduro and his leaders have flouted.

“The regime has created multimillion-dollar control structures and international alliances, which have numerous weapons at their disposal. One of them is the one that the United States is attacking, that is to say the drug problem, but there are many others,” he denounces. And he details how one of the points of this plan is to “cut off all the channels through which money flows” to Maduro’s government. And that is why the opposition demands international support to neutralize the alliances that support Maduro.

“If what we experienced at the Argentine Embassy served any purpose, it was to demonstrate the incapacity of what institutions mean in a time when there are no tools to generate the necessary pressure through constitutional mechanisms,” explains Meda. According to him, the strength of the regime “is a question of money. For 26 years it has been putting in place structures to protect its criminal system thanks to donations with the resources of Venezuelans.”

Meda calls what happened this week in Oslo “brutal,” because it puts Venezuela on the map and allows Venezuelans, through this award, to explain to the world the truth about what is happening there. This not only gives protection to María Corina and the process, but also the strength and energy for a new beginning for the country.

So what’s next? “Let the objective be achieved; Otherwise, it would be catastrophic because it would show that no matter what we do and that we do it well, and that it is internationally recognized, bad things sell,” he denounces.

Much closer than yesterday

For Antonio Ledezmaformer mayor of Caracas and coordinator of international affairs of the Con Venezuela command in Spain, the awarding of the prize and the trip of María Corina Machado reinforce the international agenda, “which was already articulated in a declaration of struggle”. For Ledezma, “the closure of this agenda is the crowning achievement of the installation of the transitional government, that is what we are working for. We are not going to irresponsibly give an exact date. But we are much closer than yesterday, because everything we have accomplished makes us optimistic about expecting results not in the long or medium term, but in the short term.