Colombia Leader Meets Venezuela Opposition Candidate With Maduro’s Consent

Andreina Itriago Acosta
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Colombia’s Gustavo Petro met with Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales during a whirlwind visit to Caracas as he positions himself as a mediator in the political crisis that has engulfed the neighboring country, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Following a nearly three-hour-long conversation with Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro at the presidential palace on Tuesday, Petro met with Rosales on Wednesday morning, the people said, asking for anonymity as the discussions are private. Before his departure from Caracas, the Colombian leader said in a social media post that he had met with “sectors of the country’s opposition.”

Petro encountered Rosales with Maduro’s blessing, the people said, supporting the view that he’s the candidate approved by the Venezuelan president to run in elections that are widely expected to be a sham. The leftist Colombian leader did not pay visits to other opposition figures, including Maria Corina Machado, who was excluded from the race, the people said.

A press official for Petro said they could not confirm his meeting with Rosales, while a press official for Rosales didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Colombian president is stepping up as a potential mediator in Venezuela even after his government took the unusual initiative of criticizing Caracas for blocking the participation of several opposition candidates in the July 28 election. The crackdown on nearly anyone who could pose a challenge to Maduro’s reelection bid was widely condemned by the international community, forcing the US to rethink a deal to lift sanctions on the country’s oil exports in exchange for free and fair elections.

Since taking office, however, Petro has sought to dispel years of tensions with Venezuela, restoring diplomatic ties with Caracas and reopening the border between both countries.

A New Era, a moderate opposition party, was able to register Rosales’s candidacy minutes before a March 25 deadline. Neither Machado, who won an October opposition primary, nor her substitute, Corina Yoris, were allowed to participate.

Rosales, 71, ran in the 2006 presidential election that was won by the late Hugo Chavez. He is currently serving a second term as Zulia state governor.

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