MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“I am the right person”: Delcy Rodríguez casts herself as guarantor of Venezuela’s transition

“There will be elections, all those our Constitution requires, organised by a renewed electoral authority and with the world as witness,” Rodríguez said in an address to the nation

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday presented herself as the guarantor of democratic change in the country and promised elections organised by a “renewed” electoral authority, though she set no date. “This process can only be led by someone who knows the inner workings of the Venezuelan state deeply. I know this state and I am the right person to carry this process forward,” she said.

“There will be elections, all those our Constitution requires, organised by a renewed electoral authority and with the world as witness,” Rodríguez said in an address to the nation, recalling that she has served as deputy foreign minister, foreign minister, minister and vice-president. She championed a “political, economic, cultural, spiritual, democratic, orderly and verifiable” transformation and said her government has a roadmap. “Venezuela’s political horizon is not measured by a date on the calendar but by a sequence of objectives we must achieve,” including legal reform, guarantees of participation for all political forces and “elections that are a solution and not a source of irreconcilable conflict”. “An announcement like this is worth not what it promises but what it delivers,” she added.

Rodríguez also announced a national consultation to reform criminal justice, with technical assistance from the European Union, and said she had requested the cooperation of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The National Assembly last week presented a reform that the Supreme Court declared constitutional, and Rodríguez called for it to be debated in a broad consultation with all sectors.

The address came four days after opposition leader María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela after nearly ten months abroad, and shortly before her first press conference since her return. Rodríguez had called her arrival a “show”. Rodríguez has governed as acting president since January, after Nicolás Maduro’s removal from power in a US military operation. Her government has been negotiating with the opposition since August a roadmap that includes renewing the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council and holding regional elections before the presidential vote, a sequence Machado rejects. The US State Department has said that under that roadmap Rodríguez should leave the presidency vacant in 2027.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump suggested that Venezuela become the “51st state” of the United States and elect a governor instead of a president, an idea Rodríguez has rejected in the past.