Venezuela: Juan Guaidó Demands Maduro Regime Organize ‘Free and Fair’ Elections

CARACAS, Venezuela – Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s legitimate yet powerless president, led a rally of hundreds of Venezuelans towards one of the headquarters of the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE) in the capital on Thursday to demand socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro hold “free and fair” presidential elections in 2024.

“Maduro, set the date. We are ready to defeat you from end to end throughout Venezuela. Now don’t be cowardly, put a date on it, before. The unit has been called, the primary has been called and we are going to make a difference in all of Venezuela,” Guaidó said outside the Electoral Council’s offices located in Plaza Venezuela, Caracas.

It is worth mentioning that the offices where Guaidó’s rally took place are not the main headquarters of the Electoral Council, which are also located in Caracas but, rather, the regional offices for the nation’s Capital District.

Guaidó’s rally outside the notoriously election-rigging organization — which is under the control of the Maduro regime — and his demands for “free and fair elections” in 2024 took place one week after two different reports claimed that the Venezuelan “opposition” is planning to dissolve Guaidó’s interim government in January 2023.

Venezuela’s interim government, presided over by Guaidó, was established in January 2019 according to the nation’s constitution in response to Maduro’s refusal to step down after holding sham presidential elections in May 2018.

Celebrating “free and fair elections” without Maduro’s participation was the third and last goal Guaidó promised the nation when he assumed the country’s interim presidency. Hypothetical free and fair elections were intended to have only taken place after Maduro had ceased usurping the presidency and a transitory government had been established, goals that both Guaidó and the Venezuelan “opposition” failed to achieve.

On the contrary, Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, rather than ceding power, have further cemented their grip on the country, holding sham legislative elections in 2020 and equally sham regional elections in 2021. The former accomplished its goal of replacing the country’s National Assembly lawmakers — the only branch of government up to that point in control of the “opposition” — and filling it with pro-regime members in its entirety. The latter counted with the enthusiastic participation and collaboration of some “opposition” parties.

“The date of the presidential election that they owe us is the time to get out of Maduro together and recover Venezuela,” Guaidó said on his Twitter account after the rally was over.

Throughout October, both Maduro and Socialist Party strongman and alleged drug kingpin Diosdado Cabello vaguely expressed the possibility of holding presidential elections in 2023 instead of the “correct” 2024 date, when the current six-year presidential term Maduro wields after holding sham elections in 2018 is meant to end.

Holding presidential elections in 2023 instead of 2024 would leave the Venezuelan “opposition” with little to no time to hold primaries to choose a candidate to go against Maduro, as the ”opposition” – itself heavily populated by socialists – is currently undergoing initial preparations towards celebrating primaries next year.

“We call the primary to consolidate the only thing that has defeated the dictatorship over and over again: unity,” Guaidó said in another tweet.

Guaidó is yet to either confirm or deny his participation as candidate for the upcoming “opposition” primaries.

Guaidó has been facing pressure from the administration of leftist President Joe Biden, which recognizes Guaidó as the country’s head of state, to participate in “free and fair” elections against Maduro in 2024. Biden officials have expressed hope that the Maduro regime and “opposition” leaders resume negotiations towards celebrating the hypothetical elections. Multiple attempts at negotiations have occurred throughout the more than two decades of chavista rule in Venezuela and have always ended in failure.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.