El Nacional has pretty much the entirety of the talks last night in the forms of clips of the people who spoke.
Maduro spoke for a total of 56 minutes, and in the interest of fairness the other 22 people present (11 from the opposition and 11 from the government) were each allotted 10 minutes to speak.
The head of the MUD delegation, Ramon Aveledo, asked for the release of political prisoners (namely Lopez, Simonovis, Scarano and Ceballos) and peaceful protesters, the disarmament of the colectivos armados, the re-organization of the branches of government as impartial institutions, a proposed amnesty law, and something to do with parliamentary oversight of the government-created Truth Commission.
The opposition also proposed two more meetings this coming Tuesday: one with the students, and one to iron out the details of the Truth Commission.
The opposition also unequivocally renounced the violence seen during the protests. Ramon Aveledo said:
The antidote against violence is the Constitution. We must obey it, not laugh at it! It’s not just for just, it’s to be obeyed. We reject violence, in the framework of the Constitution, sin trucos y sin trampas! [literally, “without tricks or traps”, roughly, “very clearly and sincerely”].
I didn’t get to see the talks, but here is a collection of quotes from different media sources this morning of some of the things that were said last night:
Henry Ramos Allup, director of the Accion Democratica party:
The cause of the problem is that the government distances itself from the Constitution. The government talks about revolution, socialism, and a civic-military union, but that’s not in the Constitution. They talk about a civic-military union, which affects the civic power. When the military participates in the civic power, that has nefarious consequences.
(…)
This constitution does not talk about socialism or revolution because that doesn’t mean a democratic exercise. It’d be bad if we held a debate on the results and not the causes. I think that one of the causes, probably the biggest one, is that the government has distanced itself from the framework of the constitution, and has transgressed it. The word “revolution” does not appear in the constitution.
(…)
The army should be subordinate to the civic power, not married to ideology. The National Armed Forces are not Bolivarian, socialist or Chavista. That causes problems in the National Armed Forces… in the constitution, only the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard appear, not reserves and not militias.
Diosdado Cabello, President of the National Assembly:
We know who we’re sitting with now (…) they are expert at saying, ‘I didn’t do it’ (… ) This makes us be on guard. I see the opposition as a single package, since I feel that they haven’t distanced themselves from the violence.
(…)
There are no agreements or negotiation here, let’s say it like it is.
(…)
The only colectivos armados are the ones that burn a university.
Elias Jaua, Foreign Minister:
President Maduro has no reason to agree to anything, because he has a mandate from the people. He has to recognize you as political and social actors, but he can’t do what you pretend to do as a form of government. He’s the one who won, with a political project, a patriotic program [or, “a program to build a country”].
(…)
That took us to 1992, and as Commander Chavez always said, he could have taken a violent path, but instead he chose a democratic and peaceful path to that grave contradiction and for that sector of the Venezuelan population that felt excluded or was excluded.
Andres Velasquez, from La Causa R, said on scarcity:
We don’t come to negotiate, but rather to ask, demand, on behalf of a people on the streets. Constitutional rights are non-negotiable. There’s no flour, milk for baby bottles, or sugar. People are marked with signs and then they spend five or six hours in line ups. There’s no oil, either for cooking or for motors. We’re forced to say this: these are the reasons that legitimize the protests!
On the “people are marked with signs” comment: sometimes in line ups, people are given a number to signify what position they hold in line, and sometimes this number is written on their hands or arms.
Omar Barboza, secretary general of Un Nuevo Tiempo:
The MUD was born out of politics, and we do not authorize nor do we support violence, and we are determined to punish those who in our name are carrying out violent acts. We want justice for all of those who have died and have been injured, and that’s why we want the Truth Commission so that we can all have peace, and those who have to pay must pay. We are interested in the truth. Not on the official truth, but the real truth.
Henrique Capriles, governor of Miranda:
Venezuela is doing really badly. Our country is in a really critical situation.
(…)
[To Maduro] How can you ask for respect and you don’t give respect? How can you ask the country to accept you, if you say half the people are fascists? It’s really hard to govern when half the country is against you… While you’re sitting on that chair [that of the president] you need to respect and recognize all Venezuelans. Now, if you don’t want to sit on that chair, say so.
(…)
I told Nicolas on the night of April 14, 2013 [Election night] that an election audit had to be carried out (…) I told him that if we lost by one vote, we had to recognize it, but that if we won by one vote then you had to recognize it. The last thing you said to me was, ‘I will ask about that and let you know’. Later, you went on cadena [and said] that I had proposed a deal to you and that you didn’t accept it. And that you were determined to open up every ballot box. After, we went out and asked for the audit.
(…)
Nicolas, you’ve managed to stay here through the power you have over institutions. You all know it, the country knows it. Now we want the crisis in the country to be resolved. Why? Because if this situation keeps getting worse, either a coup or a social outburst will happen, and we don’t want that.
(…)
[On April 14, 2013] the country changed, whether you like to admit it or not (…) you haven’t recognized that there is a political crisis here.
Commentary
The talks were not a debate. They were… something else. Everyone had 10 minutes to speak. People sometimes interrupted each other, but things never got heated. There wasn’t really any kind of effort on anyone’s part to truly engage the other side in a debate. Instead, people used the 10 minutes allotted to them to get across whatever point they wanted to get across. And that was that. No rebuttals, no dissection of claims, no analysis of statements.
At the end of the night, the whole thing seemed to have been mostly symbolic. It’s not often that you see, for example, Capriles and Maduro sitting in the same room. Nothing new or concrete came out of the talks.
Perhaps the best way to exemplify the tone and productivity of the night is with a picture. This is a tweet that Diosdado Cabello wrote and sent while the meeting was taking place:
It reads: “The fascist murderer Capriles definitely has problems, he doesn’t understand that he lost the April elections, it looks like he’s missing something [“he’s missing a screw”]”.
Some “dialogue”! Some “debate”!
In Venezuela 