from the Orinoco Tribune, published June 7, 2024
The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, revealed in a recent press conference the “offers” Washington officials have made to President Nicolás Maduro to leave the Venezuelan presidency.
On Tuesday, June 4, Rodríguez, who is also the coordinator of President Maduro’s reelection campaign, explained that when he participated in the dialogue in Mexico between the Venezuelan Government and a sector of the Venezuelan far-right opposition, they made “offers” to the president and his wife, Cilia Flores, on several occasions.
“In Mexico, the gringos asked for a meeting, and Maduro told me: ‘Go see what the gringos want,’” said Rodríguez, who also served as head of the government delegation in the dialogues with the opposition.
“And do you know what they told me?” Rodriguez continued. “‘Let Maduro choose the country where he wants to go. We will give him a few million dollars; we will give him a big house.‘”
🔴 #AHORA | Jorge Rodríguez: “A mí me dijeron en México, en una reunión que los gringos pidieron, ‘que Maduro elija el país al que se quiere ir, le damos los millones de dólares y una casa. No los vamos a tocar'”#Elecciones2024 pic.twitter.com/Y2b8MIuNOZ
— El Cooperante (@El_Cooperante) June 4, 2024
The officials’ proposal was also addressed to President Maduro’s wife, Deputy Cilia Flores, who would have been offered a mansion in the Dominican Republic.
“I kept looking at him. Does this man [without mentioning a name] know who Simón Bolívar is?… What is this man talking to me about? ” Rodríguez recalled asking himself.
After that meeting, Rodríguez says he called Maduro to tell him what the opposition had just offered.
Given the information received, the president questioned him: “And what did you do?” Rodriguez responded: “What you told me to do, send them to hell.”
Not only once
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) Deputy Rodríguez remembers that “those temptations” were presented to President Maduro “again and again, all the time. They were already laughable. They were laughable. There is no honor among thieves,” he added.
During his meeting with the media, Rodríguez also revealed that he had witnessed the Venezuelan far-right politicians’ subordination to the US authorities at the dialogue table.
According to Rodríguez, when he greeted them, the Venezuelan opponents wrote to the US ambassador in Colombia, Francisco Palmieri, asking him if they could return Rodríguez’s greeting.
“They cannot move their left foot and then their right foot if they are not authorized,” Rodríguez said. He referred to when, in 2022, conservative politician Henry Ramos Allup received a visit at his home from former US chargé d’affaires in Venezuela, Todd Robinson, who dissuaded through intimidation Ramos from running as a candidate for the presidential elections.
“He put his feet on a table and said, ‘You can’t run because you have family members, you have sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, and children; and you have bills,’” Rodríguez said about the US diplomat’s intimidation of Allup. In Rodríguez’s opinion, Allup is currently calling for votes in the next elections on July 28 because he is authorized to do so.
*Featured Image: Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez (left) and President Nicolás Maduro with a Simón Bolívar portrait in the background at Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela on June 2019. Photo: Matias de la Croix/Getty Images/file photo.