The Government of Norway has formally announced an agreement between the Executive of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition to resume the negotiation process this Saturday in Mexico, more than a year after the failure of the previous attempt.
The Norwegian authorities, who are acting as ‘facilitators’ of the process, announced on Thursday that the parties «will sign a partial agreement on social matters» in this start of the negotiations, which had been speculated about since last week.
The opposition will once again be represented by the Unitary Platform, which brings together the four major parties. This group has also confirmed the new attempt at rapprochement in a process which, in its opinion, «should never have been suspended».
Chavism left the table in August 2021 as a sign of discomfort for the extradition to the United States of Alex Saab, considered Maduro’s front man, but in the last few days contacts between the parties have been renewed, with a particularly symbolic meeting last week at the Paris Peace Forum.
The Unitary Platform trusts in «reaching agreements that allow materializing the mechanisms that ensure the welfare of all Venezuelans». «There will be no real way out of the crisis without a comprehensive political agreement that provides solutions to our people», it has recognized.
In this sense, he has pointed out that he arrives at the new process «with the urgency and the will to find once and for all tangible and real agreements», which «translate into solutions for the humanitarian crisis, the respect for Human Rights, the compliance with the Rule of Law and, especially, the construction of conditions and institutions that guarantee, among other things, free and observable elections».
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó has pointed out in his Twitter account that the objective is to «achieve that election that means for Venezuela the door to democracy, freedom and the reunion of the family». The opposition has its sights set on the next presidential elections, for which there is no date yet.
«We insist that the agreement, the primary and the presence in the street, are all mechanisms to achieve the election they owe us,» stressed Guaidó, who in January 2019 proclaimed himself ‘president in charge’ of the South American country by asserting his leadership of the National Assembly.
On the part of chavismo, the delegation would again be headed precisely by the president of the National Assembly that emerged in the last elections, Jorge Rodríguez, who has shared on his Twitter the message from the Norwegian Embassy in Mexico.
