Countdown to the end of Venezuela's tyranny

As has been demonstrated in the case of the bloodthirsty Syrian ex-dictator Bashar Al-Assad, when it comes to fleeing into exile, only those who can get on a plane can do so, albeit with the immense fortunes they stole during the years in which they were able to plunder the country with impunity put in safe custody beforehand. 

In the case of Venezuela, there is no doubt that on 10 January there will be a choice between a usurper Nicolás Maduro taking the presidential sash or the president-elect, Edmundo González Urrutia, legitimately assuming power. 

And there is no doubt about it, because if Maduro's usurpation is confirmed, it would be the certification of the end of democracy as a universal concept. Edmundo González, but above all María Corina Machado, the true heroine of Venezuela's return to the concert of democratic nations, not only won in an overwhelming and irrefutable manner in elections organised and controlled by Maduro and his henchmen, plagued by irregularities, They also managed to deprive chavismo-madurismo of arguments to try to counter the incontrovertible truth that a subjugated, plundered and impoverished people like the Venezuelan people voted massively for the tyrant and his cronies to leave power. 

Edmundo González and María Corina Machado managed, then, to overcome the farce concocted by Maduro, Padrino, Cabello and the Rodríguez brothers in order to, whatever the Venezuelan people voted for, continue clinging to power. Admitting this on the part of the countries and governments that recognise it would be as much as sending the message ‘urbi et orbe’ that dialogue, the outstretched hand, the absence of a revanchist spirit and, in short, the ballot box are useless. Or, in other words, that tyrannies and dictatorships cannot be removed from power peacefully; that it can only be done by cannon fire, lynchings and rivers of blood. 

Despite all the crimes committed by the chavista-madurista tyranny, Maduro and his henchmen are lucky. Edmundo González and María Corina Machado have long been offering them ‘a peaceful transition’ of power, an offer they have not only rejected, but have made a mockery of in a thunderous manner. That time may be over, and now the only way out left for Maduro and his inner circle of praetorians is to negotiate their exit from power and from the country, taking with them wherever they settle the wealth they have already been able to extract and presumably put in safekeeping. 

If they fail to do so, it is more than a presumption to presage that the tyrants' exit will be by force, and that they will force the new US administration of Donald Trump to exert extreme pressure on a pro-Maduro Venezuela. Both the next Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Trump's special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio-Claver-Carone, are quite clear that this time the cancer of neo-communist totalitarianism will have to be cut out so that Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, does not end up like that frustrated exporter of revolutions of misery, Castro's Cuba. 

If the Maduro, Cabello, Padrino and Rodríguez gang accept that their time is up, Edmundo González must take possession of his well-earned Presidency of the Republic, and entrust to his executive vice-president, María Corina Machado, the reconstruction programme that Edmundo himself announced in Madrid, in his appearance at the New Economy Forum, presented in turn by the former Prime Minister of Spain, Felipe González. 

One hundred days and six points to set in motion the gigantic task of rebuilding an exhausted and plundered country, in which the tyrants who have governed it have prostituted and abused the name of Simón Bolívar to justify the excesses of what they pompously called the ‘Bolivarian revolution’. 

Edmundo González places Justice and national reconciliation as the first of the points to be tackled in his mandate. Forgiveness and justice must be found, but those who have committed crimes must also be held accountable. 

The second point will be to restore the value of pensions, which have been reduced to a mere handout due to the colossal inflation suffered by a population 90% below the poverty line. 

The reconstruction of critical infrastructure is the third pillar of the González-Machado tandem's programme, with priority attention to hospitals, schools, roads, ports and airports. At the same time, the plan to get 100 per cent of children and adolescents into school will be implemented as a matter of urgency, as well as access to a comprehensive health system, now practically dismantled. 

Venezuela's new democratic government is obviously counting on immediately attracting the favourable loans and investments needed to reduce the huge fiscal deficit, stabilise the economy and drastically reduce inflation. This is the fifth chapter of its programme. To this end, he has promised to open up the country's economy in order to facilitate international investment in strategic sectors such as energy and transport, the sixth and final point of this urgent programme, which is brief in its wording but enormous in terms of the enormous effort it will require to implement it. 

Such is the devastation that chavismo-madurismo leaves behind that it will require as much or even more enthusiasm from the people who voted massively for change in the elections of 28 July. A people in which we must not forget the eight million Venezuelans who, for political but above all economic reasons, Maduro, Padrino, Cabello and the Rodríguez brothers threw into exile to continue clinging to the impunity of their criminal tyranny.