The opposition asks for support from the military and moves its pieces to confront Nicolás Maduro

Edmundo González Urrutia asks for support from the Armed Forces to assume power instead of Nicolás Maduro and María Corina Machado calls for protests: the opposition in Venezuela move pieces on a board where The role of the military, analysts emphasize, is “crucial.”

The high command of the Armed Forces, for now, ratified in a statement “loyalty, obedience and subordination” to Maduro, who plans to take office for a third consecutive term (2025-2031) on Friday, January 10 in front of Parliament, controlled by the ruling Chavismo.

González Urrutia denounces fraud in the elections of July 28 and claims victory. The United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries ignored the re-election of the Chavista leader, who declared himself the winner without the voting minutes being published.

“On January 10 (…), I must assume the role of commander in chief,” said González Urrutia in a video addressed to the Armed Forces, while Machado, opposition leader, called for demonstrations on the 9th.

“Our National Armed Forces are called to be a guarantee of sovereignty and respect for the popular will,” added the former ambassador and sudden candidate for president in 2024.

A statement from the Armed Forces condemned the opponent’s call, stating that “it will not have the slightest impact” in the military ranks. “Don’t be wrong about us,” warned the text read on state television by the Minister of Defense, General Vladimir Padrino, a faithful Chavista official.

Maduro celebrated that response on social networks.

“In union with the popular-police-military power, we raise our voices in “total rejection of the shameless message from Edmundo González Urrutia”public. “They won’t be able to!”

The possibility of an immediate fracture in Chavismo seems low according to experts consulted by AFP, when The military has seen its power reinforced during the governments of Hugo Chávez and his successor Maduro, with extensive presence in key positions, including the vital oil industry.

The Armed Forces are “crucial” to decide “if the possibility of a transition opens,” geopolitics and diplomacy specialist Mariano de Alba told AFP.

“González Urrutia’s strategy,” in that context, “seeks to give impetus to the opposition cause and assume a leading role in trying to increase international pressure.”

After receiving political asylum in Spain, González is on a tour that has taken him to Argentina, Uruguay and the United States and in which visits to Panama and the Dominican Republic are planned.

Carol Pedroso, professor of international relations at the Federal University of São Paulo, believes that a change of power “is not a totally impossible scenario, but it is unlikely, unless (the opposition) has cards hidden up their sleeve.”

“What could those cards be? some kind of negotiation with the high command of the Armed Forces,” he explains.

Protests that broke out after the proclamation of Maduro as president-elect left 28 dead, almost 200 injured and more than 2,400 detained, accused of terrorism. Three of those arrested died in prison.

In this climate of repression and terror, Machado calls to “overcome fear” and take to the streets to confront the Chavista regime.

“Here I am to guarantee perpetual peace,” Maduro claimed on Monday during a public event in front of the presidential palace in Caracas.

Shortly before, the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, said he was “convinced” that “nothing is going to happen,” but warned that there will be “consequences” for “those who want to disturb the peace.”

The Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DIGCIM), which usually acts in cases of arrests of opponents, uploaded a message to social networks of a hand knocking on a door with the legend ‘Tun Tun’, a reference to arrests made in houses.

Calls for the military to turn its back on Maduro were constant with the failed parallel government that the opposition promoted in 2019 with the then parliamentary leader Juan Guaidó at the head.

Maduro has called González Urrutia “Guaidó 2.0”.

“There are important differences,” says political science doctor Daniel Varnagy. “Guaidó, good or bad, was the result of a political decision by a leadership that sought to force a negotiation (…) and now there was a presidential election in which I think the government underestimated María Corina Machado and her strategy.”

Beyond the military sector, Mariano de Alba believes that “circumstances could change” if there were “a faction of the government that decides to distance itself and bet on a transition.”