Former socialist Spanish president Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero told Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López this week that dictator Nicolás Maduro is willing to postpone a vote to elect drafters of a new constitution if the opposition offers a “cooling off” of protests, according to the Miami Herald.
Zapatero spent much of 2016 attempting to negotiate a peace deal between the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) and the Venezuelan socialist government. That deal collapsed as Maduro refused to give in power, hold new presidential elections, free the nation’s hundreds of political prisoners, or cease deploying the nation’s military to attack unarmed civilians.
The Herald notes that Freddy Guevara, the opposition-run National Assembly’s first vice president, announced on Twitter that Zapatero shared breakfast with López at his home, where he is currently under house arrest. Maduro’s government sentenced López to fourteen years in prison for organizing peaceful protests against the government.
In that meeting, the Herald claims, Zapatero said Maduro “offered the opposition, in secret negotiations, a 45-day delay of Sunday’s election for a Constitutional Assembly and a proposal to hold presidential elections by the end of next year.” Maduro demanded in exchange “a ‘cooling down’ of the street protests against the government” and support against further sanctions from the United States.
The Herald adds that a D.C. source claims “Maduro is asking the opposition to help him lobby the U.S. government to abstain from slapping new sanctions on the Venezuelan government.”
Venezuelans have taken to the streets every day since late March—111 days and counting—to protest Maduro. The Venezuelan website Runrunes reports that 116 people have died in protests, most the victims of brutal repressive tactics by Maduro’s National Guard.
Maduro also reportedly requested the opposition stop appointing a series of new judges to the Supreme Court, which the National Assembly claims it has the right to based on an election this month in which 98 percent of Venezuelans voting rejected Maduro’s plan for a new constitution.
The July 30 vote to appoint a “National Constituents’ Assembly” would create a parallel legislature made up entirely of socialist Maduro supporters, who would replace the National Assembly and draft a new constitution to keep Maduro in power.
All signs suggest that the opposition has rejected Maduro’s deal. Following the meeting between Zapatero and López, Guevara tweeted that López had reiterated the need to respect the opposition-held vote against the new constitution and the call for presidential elections. “Hopefully someone in the regime has enough sense to suspend the ANC [National Constituents’ Assembly], but we cannot let down our guard: the streets are our strength!”
Leopoldo López later released a video Tuesday calling on Venezuelans to persist protesting in the streets “until we achieve democracy and peace,” reminding listeners that he had suffered “cruel treatment and humiliation” in prison and that their protests were “historic for Venezuela and the world.”
Other opposition leaders rejected Zapatero’s continued presence in Venezuela entirely, noting his total failure at brokering a peace deal throughout 2016. “The only negotiation that we will accept is Maduro’s exit from power as soon as possible,” María Corina Machado, the leader of the Vente Venezuela opposition party, told the newspaper El Nacional. “[Zapatero] came with a last-minute salvation plan of intensive care [for the regime], and he is wrong if he thinks he will stop our struggle in exchange for stopping the ANC.”
The MUD, meanwhile, has since appointed more Supreme Court judges and justices to replace the socialists in office, citing the July vote against the government as a public mandate to do so. MUD leaders have organized a 48-hour general strike beginning Wednesday to paralyze Caracas.
On his weekly program Sundays with Maduro, the president vowed this week to not cancel the constituents’ assembly vote. “You will not defeat me, you have not defeated me, and you will never defeat me,” Maduro shouted, calling the opposition “damaged adolescents full of fascism and unbridled ambitions and hate.”
In a statement Wednesday, the Venezuelan government accused the United States of “systematic aggressions against Venezuela” including support for the opposition and “illegal, coercive unilateral measures” including sanctions against high-ranking officials.
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