Caracas Chronicles

• On Wednesday, the director of Vente Venezuela María Corina Machado proposed a great election to choose new opposition leadership that “leads Venezuela to freedom.” Machado said it’s a way to use the abstention on the election on November 21st, so the new leadership can focus on coordinating the opposition to generate change. María Corina said “nobody believes in the National Electoral Council’s figures” and assured that Maduro wants to keep renovating his “cohabitating” opposition. He asked leaders not to blame citizens for their mistakes and emphasized that if they want different outcomes they must take different actions. 
• The former secretary-general of the Democratic Unity Roundtable de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, said the results demand “profound revision.” He said the country needs solutions and that politicians’ obligation is to find a way to give them to them. “We have to have a plan and it must be consensual.” 
• Lawyers Allan Brewer Carías, Cecilia Sosa Gómez, Juan Manuel Raffalli and Rafael Badell Madrid, constitutional experts, agreed that until we have free, fair and authentic elections, Juan Guaidó retains the status of the Caretaker President since Maduro’s unconstitutional usurpation of powers is still so. 
• Eugenio Martínez, a journalist who specializes in electoral coverage, assured the EU’s preliminary report on the election is a starting point for what would have to be negotiated for the 2024-2025 electoral cycle. 
• ANC-imposed prosecutor general Tarek William Saab provided some more figures (that can’t be proven) to try to show that his administration has been a beacon of justice. Twenty-one days ago, the International Criminal Court opened the investigation phase for crimes against humanity committed by the regime. He said that 207 officers of state security forces have been charged this year for human rights violations and that they’ve achieved 83 convictions. Saab didn’t expand on the dimension of the figures or what they represent. He didn’t mention anything about procedural delays in political causes or investigations they haven’t opened on the chains of command in cases of crimes against humanity. 

After some videos of a newly elected councilman went viral, Tarek William Saab opened an investigation against Alejandro Moncada, who just won in El Hatillo on Sunday. He’s accused of “psychological violence and harassment”. Last week, a Tiktok video by José Vicente Rangel, spewing misogyny from the office of the Municipal Women’s Institute also went viral and Saab hasn’t done anything about it. Rangel was reelected on Sunday for the Sucre municipality. 

• The National Electoral Council (CNE) postponed handing governor-elect Manuel Rosales’s credentials in Zulia, despite having proclaimed chavista winners in other states. 
• The regional electoral board proclaimed PSUV candidate Eduardo Piñate as governor of Apure, while officers of the GNB repressed citizens who were protesting in favor of MUD candidate Luis Lippa. GNB officers fired tear gas while Piñate was shown on VTV with his proclamation certificate. 
• In Barinas, GNB closed all access to the capital of the state to block the mobilization to the regional CNE office called by opposition candidate Freddy Superlano. Argenis Chávez, Chávez’s brother, is the regime’s candidate in the state. The EU electoral observation mission is still in Venezuela. 
• Carmen Meléndez was proclaimed mayor of Caracas. She said “her arms are open” for all citizens who didn’t vote for her. 
• Mexican citizen Liliana Mendoza, another of the regime’s international observers, was bold enough to question Venezuelans’ poverty: “We’ve seen that this is a lie, you’ve managed to keep going with so much against you,” she said. 
• “Conditions for free and fair elections still don’t exist in Venezuela,” said Canadian foreign minister Mélanie Joly. The regime responded by saying “Because of the lack of its own exterior policy and in order to comply with the expectations of the U.S., the Canadian government resorted to belittlement.” 
• Foreign minister accused Colombian president Iván Duque of being “Latin America’s worst phony,” and said his administration was “betraying peace agreements.” 

Economist Asdrúbal Oliveros celebrated that the economy hasn’t kept shrinking. He highlighted the consolidation of financial dollarization, the lowest contraction in the last couple of years and the deacceleration of inflation. 

• OFAC renewed permits for several oil companies to keep working in Venezuela and negotiate with PDVSA until June 2022. 
• The Spanish government assured that the elections didn’t comply “with the democratic expectations, even when there was an improvement from previous ones.” 
• The Foreign Ministry announced that 249 Venezuelan citizens returned from Peru with the Vuelta a la Patria program. There are over a million Venezuelan citizens in Peru.