The Panama Manifesto: Venezuela's opposition charts a new course
· UPIJune 4 (UPI) -- On May 28, a document signed in Panama City marked one of the more important strategic shifts in Venezuela's long democratic struggle.
The Panama Manifesto, formally titled For a Grand National Agreement and the Democratic Transition of Venezuela, brought together the Democratic Unity Platform, Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, and the forces aligned with Edmundo González Urrutia behind a roadmap for democratic transition.
Five months earlier, on Jan. 3, U.S. special forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas under Operation Absolute Resolve and flew them to New York to face federal narco-terrorism charges. Venezuela's Supreme Court then ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume executive powers as acting president.
That rupture did not produce democracy overnight. It did, however, open a new political moment. The Panama Manifesto is the opposition's attempt to give that moment direction.
A two-track strategy
The manifesto proposes two simultaneous processes rather than a single path.
The first is direct political negotiation with the Rodríguez government. Machado would lead this effort "in her role as conductor of the country's democratic process," appointing the opposition's lead negotiator and coordinating with the Democratic Unity Platform and Venezuelan civil society.
The second is the construction of what the manifesto calls the Gran Acuerdo Nacional para la Recuperación de la República, or Grand National Agreement for the Recovery of the Republic. Its acronym, GANAR, means "to win" in Spanish. The idea is to build a broad civic and political pact involving churches, labor unions, business leaders, universities, and the diaspora.
Venezuela's opposition has negotiated before. Rounds in Barbados, Mexico, and Oslo began with expectations and ended in frustration. The Maduro government repeatedly used talks to divide opponents, buy time, or ease international pressure without accepting democratic change.
Maduro is now gone from Miraflores Palace, but the machinery that sustained Chavismo remains largely intact. The intelligence services, the colectivos, and the compromised judiciary did not disappear when Maduro was placed in a New York prison cell. The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela reached the same conclusion in its March 2026 report.
If talks with Rodríguez fail, the opposition will need more than another declaration of protest. It will need an organized national coalition capable of maintaining pressure and preparing the ground for democratic governance. That is what GANAR is designed to become.
Conditions for transition
The manifesto sets clear prerequisites. It demands the full release of remaining political prisoners and the safe return of exiles. It reaffirms the July 28, 2024, presidential election as the legitimate mandate of the Venezuelan people, which the opposition says González Urrutia won decisively.
The human stakes are not abstract. Among those released after Maduro's capture was Enrique Márquez, a former presidential candidate who had called for transparency at a public event Maduro attended. He spent a year in El Helicoide prison. Upon release, he remained barred from speaking to the press, with legal charges still in place.
González, living in exile in Spain since late 2024, has called for new presidential elections with credible guarantees. Those would require independent electoral authorities and genuine international observation, with prisoner releases as a prerequisite rather than a concession.
Rodríguez has said Venezuela will hold "fair and free" elections but has offered no timetable. Her government has also pressed Washington to lift sanctions. The Trump administration has responded with partial measures, including removing Rodríguez from the Treasury Department's sanctions list and easing restrictions on some Venezuelan banking transactions. U.S. senators have criticized those moves as insufficiently conditioned on democratic progress.
The pressure on Washington
The United States is not a neutral actor in this story, and the opposition knows it.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been a consistent advocate for Venezuela's democratic forces. Yet the same administration has pursued commercial interests in Venezuela's oil sector, which holds some of the world's largest reserves. That tension runs through Washington's approach. The Panama Manifesto tries to navigate it by welcoming outside support while insisting that Venezuelans must lead the political process.
Why Panama, and why Machado
The choice of Panama was not accidental. President José Raúl Mulino has been one of the region's clearest voices on Venezuela's crisis, and it was through his diplomatic efforts that Machado was able to travel to receive her Nobel Peace Prize. Panama offered a practical venue when Machado could not safely return to Venezuela.
The Nobel Committee's October 2025 award recognized Machado's work for democratic rights and a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. That recognition has changed her international standing. But her greatest asset may be her ability to unify deeply divided political forces and give the democratic opposition the coherence it has historically lacked.
That unity does not guarantee success. From 2019 to 2023, dozens of countries recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president, but the strategy failed to produce a transition. Many Venezuelans lost confidence not in democracy itself, but in promises that failed to deliver change.
The opposition cannot afford to repeat that experience. The Panama Manifesto must become a working strategy, not another statement.
An opening, not a guarantee
Venezuela now stands in a rare and fragile moment. Maduro's removal has disrupted the old order without dismantling authoritarian power. Rodríguez may seek international normalization without genuine reform, and Washington will balance democratic principles against economic interests. Millions of Venezuelans who have left their country still await the chance to decide their future freely.
The Panama Manifesto does not solve these problems. But it gives the democratic transition a framework, a leadership structure, and a set of principles clear enough to be tested against reality.
For a country whose crisis has too often been defined by confusion, fear, and broken promises, that clarity is not a small thing.
Óscar Álvarez Araya is a political scientist and former Costa Rican ambassador to Taiwan. The views expressed are solely those of the author.