High regional tension ahead of the swearing-in of Venezuela’s president-elect, Nicolás Maduro, on January 10

By Micaela Ovelar, Caracas / Venezuela, January 8, 2025

This Friday, January 10, the swearing-in of the President elected on July 28, 2024, Nicolás Maduro Moros, heading to a third term during the period 2025-2031, is scheduled to take place. According to the Bolivarian Government, nothing will prevent that. The official swearing-in ceremony will take place in the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, amid tensions due to threats from several leaders and presidents of Latin America of wanting to illegally enter the country to swear in Edmundo Gonzalez on Venezuelan territory. These actions constitute an act of interference and an attempt to delegitimize the sovereign decision of the majority of the Venezuelan people expressed at the polls.

Former presidential candidate Edmundo González has said that he is determined to return to Venezuela on January 10 to take office as president. Meanwhile, the national coordinator of the political party “Vente Venezuela” and main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, in a message published on social networks, called for a national protest on January 9. In Caracas, Machado has specified a series of meeting points, one of them being the headquarters of the Episcopal Conference, located in Caracas, in front of the Juan Pablo II urbanization, for which reason, it is presumed that they intend to involve Pope Francis, forcing his intermediation.

Edmundo González’s interventionist tour

Regional politics is currently marked by “recognition vs. non-recognition” of Nicolás Maduro’s investiture as President-elect. On this subject, Edmundo González was received on January 4 in Buenos Aires by the Argentine President, Javier Milei, and in Montevideo by the Uruguayan President, Luis Lacalle Pou, as part of an international tour to gather political support against the Bolivarian Government. González’s trip has included, in addition to Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, his visit to the United States, where he held a meeting in Washington with the Democratic President, Joe Biden, who has promised that before leaving the White House, he will approve new sanctions against the Maduro government.

In the United States, the opposition leader who wants to proclaim himself president of Venezuela also met with Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor appointed by President-elect Donald Trump. González and Waltz discussed issues related to the supposed internal political crisis (which is actually external) in Venezuela. This meeting is an obvious alignment of Edmundo González with the new Republican Administration of the United States, which will officially begin on January 20.

Paraguay has now joined the list of countries mentioned above, with which the Venezuelan government had already broken diplomatic relations, since its current president, Santiago Peña, has recognized González as the elected president of Venezuela. This act of interference led the Bolivarian Government to break bilateral relations with the Guaraní nation.

Colombia and Chile have followed the same path. On January 7, Chilean President Gabriel Boric ended the Diplomatic Mission in Venezuela, withdrawing the Chilean ambassador in Caracas, and requested the departure of the Venezuelan ambassador in Santiago. Bilateral relations between Chile and Venezuela have been progressively weakening. Boric does not recognize the victory of Maduro or Edmundo González but believes that there has been fraud in the last presidential elections in Venezuela.

For his part, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, on Wednesday, January 8, made public his decision not to attend the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro. Petro expressed his displeasure with the Venezuelan government, which has arrested the former presidential candidate and former rector of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, Enrique Márquez, who is under investigation in the case of opposition leaders who have called for not recognizing Maduro’s victory on July 28, 2024.

In Panama, Edmundo González met with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, to whom he gave a copy of what would be the electoral records of last July 28, according to which González claims to have won the presidential elections. Also in Panama, González met with a group of former Latin American presidents, who reiterated their support in “his journey to be sworn in and assume the constitutional mandate for which he was elected” in Venezuela. Among the former presidents were Mexicans Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón; Laura Chinchilla (Costa Rica); Andrés Pastrana (Colombia); Jorge Quiroga (Bolivia), and Panamanians Mireya Moscoso and Ernesto Pérez Valladares. These presidents have threatened to enter Venezuelan territory to proclaim González as head of the Venezuelan Executive.

Arrest of mercenaries and activation of defense bodies

The national political scene has heated up with the announcement by President Maduro of the arrest, in Venezuelan territory, of 125 mercenaries from more than 20 countries. The Venezuelan president reported on the offensive plans to attempt against the life of the Executive Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez. This destabilizing plan was prevented thanks to the Venezuelan State Intelligence agencies.

Faced with this situation and especially in the face of the external threat, Maduro installed a new structure: the Organs of the Directorate for Comprehensive Defense (ODDI).

The ODDI is a popular civic-military unit made up of representatives of all the Venezuelan powers. In this way, this powerful space of articulation and action has been activated for the Integral Security and Defense of the Venezuelan State in the face of the imperialist threat and regional tensions in the face of the Inauguration of this January 10.

Activities in the framework of the Presidential Oath of Office

This climate of tension has not stopped a series of activities from taking place to support and celebrate the inauguration of President-elect Nicolás Maduro, who has the legitimacy of organized popular power, as well as of many leaders and States of the world, including the heads of state of China and Russia.

In this regard, Caracas is receiving more than 2,000 international guests, who have arrived from the 5 continents to participate in the Inauguration, this Friday, January 10, and to demonstrate support for the revolutionary process. Although the main activity will take place in the National Assembly, the Venezuelan capital will also host, from January 9 to 15, the World Antifascist Festival “For a New World”, a meeting place and collective action for social movements, political parties, intellectuals, women, communicators, parliamentarians and prominent personalities from various regions of the world.

Some considerations

The failure of other States to recognize the popular election that designated Nicolás Maduro as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela violates the Principle of Self-Determination of Peoples, established in Public International Law, which guarantees the right of a State to elect its own President in a sovereign manner. This means that no country or entity outside Venezuela has the right to interfere in the process of election or swearing in of a president in a sovereign State.

Furthermore, delegitimization by other presidents or former presidents violates the Principle of Non-Intervention, which establishes that no country has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another State. Each State has the responsibility to guarantee respect for Human Rights and civil rights in its territory, as well as to ensure that its population participates in free and fair elections to elect its leaders.

This is why the cessation of diplomatic relations ordered by the Venezuelan State is a coherent action as a Foreign Policy that defends Venezuelan sovereignty.

It is clear that the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty is carried out in the interest of controlling its strategic resources, given that it is one of the main places for gas, gold and other resource reserves, which gives it a leading role in the new global relations schemes. In addition to being fundamental in the development of programs that have to do with the distribution of crude oil, Caracas is also key for the peoples of the Latin American region to have access to oil at an affordable price.

Venezuela is the fundamental inspiration for the new trends in integration and an element that defines the anti-imperialist political inclination and orientation that can exist in the American continent, or at least in Latin America and the Caribbean. The position of the Bolivarian Government, since the arrival to power of President Hugo Chávez, has allowed Venezuela to break its historical subjugation with the forms of submission and dependence that linked the country to the United States.

Venezuela is now experiencing a new celebration of participatory and leading democracy, in the face of an antagonistic and contradictory situation of opposition leaders who claim to want to govern for the people, but resort to treason and the surrender of Venezuelan national sovereignty to the imperialist powers and their allies. Chavez already said: “The only democracy we believe in is the democracy of the people, participatory, leading democracy, charged with popular strength and drive.” This is the democracy that, in the face of all imperial threats, is celebrating a new popular victory on January 10.