Venezuelan Election Challenges and Hope

they're getting arrested.

So there's still all this oppression.

We don't have a date for an election.

And so, in my state, can't talk about any place else,

but Venezuelans are losing hope

that it's gonna be Delce Rodriguez,

who was Maduro's vice president, not duly elected,

as we talked about, is just gonna wait out the Trump administration

and nothing's ever gonna happen. So that's the perception.

Doesn't mean it's reality, that's the perception.

So what should I tell the Venezuelan community in my state?

I think I would refer back, Senator Scott, to Secretary Rubio's statements.

He said, you know,

we don't want elections too soon when they don't have the machinery set up.

I think something like 40 of the eligible voters in Venezuela

are not registered at this point.

So they've gotta clean up the voter rolls, they've gotta get the election

tribunal renovated.

This is why we,

but he's also said,

but we don't wanna have elections too late, and making the

point that people aren't gonna invest in a long term way in Venezuela

until they say a stable,

democratically elected government there.

So we've been trying to, get, you know

find the sweet spot between those two things.

What I mentioned earlier,

one of the good developments in our view has been the effort between the

2015 National Assembly that was a democratically elected group and includes,

I think, all the political parties of Venezuela, and the interim authority

group that they just announced today that they're going to resume their

discussions on August 1

to try to put in place all those elements that you need to have the elections.

So we're not looking at,

you know, letting this go on and on and on beyond the administration.

But we also don't wanna do it at a time not in the middle of an earthquake,

and not when a lot of people,

as we were mentioning with Senator Kaine,

when people that should be able to participate in the election can't go back

to Venezuela and so on. We need to work through those issues.

But we're working on them,

and we think that there's a good institutional structure now amongst the

Venezuelans to do that.