In a new report from the Latin American Program’s Venezuela Working Group, Caracas-based analyst Phil Gunson argues that the Venezuelan opposition has been most effective and capable of obtaining significant victories when it has been united. 

As talks between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition get underway in Mexico City, Gunson notes that tensions within the opposition over fundamental issues of strategy remain.  These tensions have played out most visibly over whether to participate in upcoming regional elections scheduled for November 2021, and under what conditions.  Gunson argues that failure to overcome the divisions—between personalities and over visions for political change—could hamper the opposition, along with its international allies, in the search for a peaceful resolution of the Venezuelan crisis.

Gunson contends that a return to the electoral path, including the holding of primary elections, is an essential part of the revitalization of the leadership at all levels, without which a democratic transition is hard to envisage.