Members of the Venezuelan opposition went from being permanently on the streets to exercising politics from shelter,hide outs and virtuality, in the face of the persecution they denounce against them and is evident, especially after the presidential elections of July 28th, in which Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed “winner”, and which the dissidents consider fraudulent.
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Opposition leader María Corina Machado has been in hiding since August 1st, fearing for her “life” and “freedom,” and has occasionally gone out to attend demonstrations, which she has attended undercover.
According to the leader, it was precisely “the growing threats” that prompted the departure from the country of the standard-bearer of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González Urrutia, who arrived in Spain on September 8th to request asylum, considering that he was suffering political and judicial persecution in Venezuela.
For Juan Pablo Guanipa, a close collaborator of both opposition leaders, although before July 28 “persecution was a reality,” afterwards it has been “unstoppable,” with “repression” against “all political leaders.”
“That forced us to take shelter and, in my case, to go out punctually, when there is an important call,” the former deputy told EFE, who pointed out that many “national, regional, municipal and parish” leaders, even from the “student sector,” are being persecuted.
Chavismo, for its part, pointed out the questions about the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) – which are still unknown in a disaggregated manner – as an attempt at a coup d’état “of a fascist nature.”
Another way of doing politics
The shelter, according to Guanipa, forces them to give up the street and, therefore, direct contact with citizens and representatives of different sectors, which is the new “way” of doing politics here (in Venezuela), becoming a “virtual leader.”
“We have to see how we can be useful in the midst of this situation,” said the 59-year-old democratic opposition member.
The former First Vice President of the National Assembly (AN) says he has reinvented himself, and now dedicates himself, in large part, to constantly publishing on social networks as a “communication mechanism with the people,” through which he spreads information about “the struggle” for “political change,” and to try to generate “hope and optimism.”
Also, he continued, being ensconced forces them to abandon, for an indefinite time, their “natural space,” in reference to “home”, which, in his case, is Zulia State, more than half a thousand kilometers away from where – he said – he is today.
“(We are) constantly changing places (…) I have to change if there is any unusual movement, (like) recently in a place where I was (where) a van from the Sebin (Bolivarian National Intelligence Service) arrived, got out, spoke to the guard, I don’t know if it was because of me or someone else (…) but that forced me to move immediately, that is, we are in a situation of persecution,” he said.
Guanipa claimed to have become “a persecuted person” by “a dictatorship that does not accept that the people told the regime that they do not want it to govern any longer, and tries to continue governing against the will of the people” who, according to the PUD, voted overwhelmingly for González Urrutia.
The persecution
At least 157 opposition politicians and social activists are currently detained in Venezuela, many of them collaborators of González Urrutia and Machado, according to the Human Rights Committee of the Vente Venezuela (VV) party, led by the leader of the change.
Meanwhile, since March, six opposition members have been sheltered in the official residence of the Argentine Embassy in Caracas, under the protection of Brazil after the expulsion of the diplomatic mission of the southern country, an authorization that, however, Venezuela revoked from the South American giant on September 7th.
Guanipa has denounced attempts to arrest him in “the last three” demonstrations in which he participated, a “luck” that – he pointed out – did not happen to some of his colleagues, among them, Freddy Superlano, Perkins Rocha and Biagio Pilieri, also collaborators of the PUD (Unitary Democratic Platform).
Despite everything, he says he is willing to attend future public meetings to fulfill the commitment he feels to the people, taking security measures, even “knowing that there will always be a risk.”
With information from EFE