Maduro responds to Guaidó that he is willing to negotiate

“Here we are waiting for you, on the electoral path. Proposal approved!”. Nicolás Maduro has given his initial approval to meet “with all the opposition” 32 hours after opposition leader Juan Guaidó proposed negotiating with the revolution within a national salvation agreement.

With his usual pendulum style and as if he were speaking to different audiences, the “people's president” went from insulting Guaidó (“wimp from the north”, hours before he had already called him “bobolongo”) to assuring that he is “ready” to start the dialogues: “When they want, where they want and how they want”, including in the negotiation Norway, the European Union (EU) and the International Contact Group (GIC), made up of Brussels and several European and Latin American countries.

Maduro intends to analyze the advantages that this negotiation would accrue, which is preceded by the failure of the one orchestrated in Oslo and Barbados during 2019. At that time and before the progress of the agreements, Maduro broke the dialogue table to form a false opposition to his measure, against which he has concurred in the last negotiations. Both the former president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the Russian foreign minister, Serguei Lavrov, had an outstanding participation in that political move, who blessed with their presence the agreement with opposition groups and expelled from the democratic front.

Prior to this announcement, the “son of Chávez” had expressed his doubts about Guaidó's proposal, which in the last few hours received the support of the United States and Spain.. “Guaidó wants to sit with me, what will he bring in his hands? What trap will he bring, they gave him the order from the north?” asked the Bolivarian president, who has turned the disqualification of those who confront him into a regular tagline in his speeches.

Maduro took advantage of his daily television intervention to once again accuse the democratic majority of betting on the “path of war, invasion, attacks, coup d'état”.

In a 180-degree turn, Guaidó presented on Tuesday a proposal for the salvation of Venezuela that involves negotiating with chavismo with the presence of international powers and that comes days after former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles advanced with chavismo the formation of a new National Electoral Council (CNE), with the presence of three staunch militants of chavismo and two opponents close to his theses.