First it was Trump who addressed the issue. From the White House, he said that Delcy Rodríguez wants there to be elections in Venezuela, but the country is still not ready to hold them.
“I don’t think they are ready yet. We took them out of a dictatorship and we get along very well with the Government. Delcy, as you know, is doing a very, very good job. She is very respected and we want that (elections) and they also want it. Delcy wants it, but they are still not ready”, Trump told the press.
He added that, although he considers that Venezuela is still not ready, he believes there could be elections soon. “They are still not ready. But soon. We hope to be able to do it soon.”
In Caracas, after Trump’s statement, Rodríguez also assured that “there will be an electoral process”, but conditioned its holding on Venezuela being prepared.
“Don’t doubt that, there will be an electoral process, but under the conditions in which Venezuela is prepared,” Rodríguez responded to a journalist during a conference after the signing of multi-million dollar oil agreements in the presence of the United States Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.
She added that “in Venezuela there is a Constitution and an electoral and democratic system provided for” that establishes the electoral calendar. “I do not set the date” for the elections, she said.
Nicolás Maduro was overthrown by the United States last January 3 and is currently imprisoned in New York. His vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assumed the interim Presidency with Washington’s approval.
The Constitution of Venezuela provides that in the absence of the president, the vice president takes the reins for a maximum period of 180 days, a period that has already expired.
Regarding the oil agreement, Rodríguez and Trump have highlighted that it foresees the development of 17 strategic fields, with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil.
Also, taking as a reference a price of 65 dollars per barrel, Venezuela could receive 209.335 billion dollars in revenue.
For its part, the White House confirmed that it granted a 100-year concession to the private company North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), of the controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt.
In this context, on Thursday opposition leader María Corina Machado published a video where she questioned the oil agreement for having been signed with Rodríguez’s government, which she considers illegitimate, and warned the United States that its “enemies” remain in the presidential palace of Miraflores.
Additionally, Machado argued that oil exploitation alone does not guarantee the economic recovery of Venezuela and that any large-scale investment needs a democratically elected government, strong institutions, transparency, and legal certainty.
Machado demanded that economic reforms in Venezuela advance in parallel with an electoral calendar that allows the election of a new president.
“Venezuela is ready to vote”
Carmen Beatriz Fernández, CEO of DataestrategIA and professor of Political Communication at the University of Navarra, holds that the coincidence between Trump and Rodríguez on the lack of conditions to hold elections in Venezuela was not accidental. She indicates that the interim president simply echoed the position of the U.S. president. “Delcy did not express her opinion freely, it was not that they coincided, but that Trump made that comment and she made her comment immediately after, like a copycat”, she states.
Fernández points out that Rodríguez’s phrase has a deeper political reading: “When Delcy says that Venezuela is not ready to hold elections, what she is saying is that they are not ready to hand over power or that they would not want to hand over power”. She adds that the government would be willing to go to the polls when it considers it has chances to win.
The analyst rejects the idea that Venezuelan society is not ready to vote. “Venezuela is ready to vote,” she asserts, and recalls that Venezuelans went massively to the polls even under the difficult conditions of the July 2024 elections, when they expressed their desire for political change.
Fernández also warns about the mismatch between economic transformation and political transition. “The speed of the changes taking place in the Venezuelan economy is much higher than the speed of the changes occurring in the transition to democracy”, she points out.
For his part, William Santana, Venezuelan diplomat, international analyst, and columnist for the newspaper “El Nacional,” believes that the coincidence between Trump and Rodríguez does not respond to a real lack of conditions for holding elections, but to political and economic interests that favor the permanence of the current interim government and the continuity of the oil agreements reached between Caracas and Washington.
“Here in Venezuela there are indeed conditions to prepare the ground for a presidential election”, Santana tells El Comercio. He calls Rodríguez’s regime “illegitimate” and emphasizes that her interim period in power has already expired. “What interests her is her permanence in power, and that is something that is being validated by Trump with his statements,” he notes.
“Donald Trump, ultimately, more than democracy, has shown that his interests are economic, in this case a control of Venezuela’s oil,”
Santana explains that democratic elections could substantially change that scenario, especially given the possibility that María Corina Machado comes to power.
“With elections, with a result that most likely María Corina Machado will win, then he [Trump] would not have such favorable conditions in Venezuela”, he points out.
Santana also doubts that the oil agreement is sufficient to guarantee the continuity of the commitments made if a change of government occurs in the future. His main argument is that the full content of the agreement has not yet been publicly disclosed.
“It is not known if it may contain harmful clauses, it may contain some element that could at some point be grounds for requesting its annulment”, he warns.
“For Trump it is convenient to have a docile person in Venezuela”
Santana considers that the oil understanding and Trump’s recent statements end up politically strengthening Rodríguez. “The agreement, with the great eloquence with which it has been presented, is screwing Delcy Rodríguez into power.”
“For Trump it is convenient to have a docile person, an obedient person, and a person who validates all his predatory logic”, he emphasizes.
The analyst extends this interpretation to Trump’s entire foreign policy. He believes the U.S. president is not prioritizing a traditional conception of peace based on humanitarian reasons, but a logic of exchange in which the United States obtains concrete benefits.
In the Venezuelan case, he considers the central element of that negotiation to be economic: “The concrete thing is peace once he has achieved an economic agreement, an agreement where his gains are, I believe, inequitable”, he states.
For Fernández, the United States has clear energy and geopolitical interests in Venezuela, but these can coincide with those of Venezuelan society. “That stability can only be achieved with democracy and with quality democracy,” she asserts.
The role of María Corina Machado
In this scenario, Santana considers that María Corina Machado and the opposition must keep as their central objective the holding of free and democratic presidential elections. He says it is not only about choosing a new government, but about recovering Venezuelan institutionalism.
“Only through free and competitive presidential elections can the rule of law be restored in Venezuela”, he asserts.
Meanwhile, Fernández holds that Machado remains the fundamental leader of Venezuela and the person in whom a vast majority of Venezuelans have placed their trust.
“She bets on a return home as soon as possible but, obviously, she is seeking that this return be agreed upon with the United States; that is basically what has held her back,” she specifies.
Santana expresses that any large-scale economic agreement should be backed by legitimate and stable institutions. “Those would be the conditions to be able to negotiate any agreement of any kind, but not with an illegitimate government and a government that has institutional fragility”, he points out.
He indicates that political uncertainty also represents an economic risk. “The risks for any investor will always be much greater” as long as there is no government with democratic legitimacy and solid institutionalism, Santana maintains.
Read more Did he try to kiss her? Pamela López tells what Paco Bazán did after his breakup with Cueva
