Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela, committed this Wednesday before the General Assembly of the United Nations that elections will be held in Venezuela, although she avoided specifying any exact date or timeline for the elections.
In her speech before the UN General Assembly in New York, the acting president of the Venezuelan government stated that a political dialogue has begun with opposition sectors to move towards an electoral process under equal conditions.
"In Venezuela, there will be elections, and in that regard, we have initiated a political dialogue with sectors of the opposition aimed at leading a process that ensures equal conditions for everyone," Rodríguez stated.
However, the determination of the moment was deliberately left up in the air. "The Venezuelan people, with their ancestral wisdom, will determine the right moment and their institutions will be ready to ensure that inclusive and transparent process," he added, without offering any verifiable commitment regarding timelines.
Rodríguez also sought to redefine the concept of democracy before the delegates gathered in New York.
"Democracy is not measured by the existence of elections. Democracy is measured by the quality of the competition that precedes those elections. An election should be a solution, not a generator of irreconcilable conflicts," he stated.
The speech also included the announcement of an "ordered legal reform" to strengthen the state and provide legal security to both investors and citizens.
Rodríguez described the reform of the justice system as "urgent" and called on the international community for "support" without "any kind of interference" in Venezuelan affairs.
The statement to the UN came a day after Rodríguez held a meeting described as "historic" with President Donald Trump at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan, marking the first in-person contact between a U.S. president and a Venezuelan leader in over eleven years.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who participated in that meeting alongside other senior officials from the Trump administration, described it as "brief but important" and revealed that the main focuses were the restructuring of Venezuelan sovereign debt, economic stabilization, and the political transition towards free and fair elections.
For his part, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia González described the meeting as "the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between Venezuela and the United States."
The context in which Rodríguez's announcement occurs is that of a rapid normalization process between Caracas and Washington following the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces on January 3, 2026, after which Rodríguez took on the role of acting president.
This process included, among other milestones, a historic oil deal through which North American Blue Energy Partners obtained rights to 17 Venezuelan fields with approximately 65 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Rodríguez's electoral promise, however, clashes with Washington's specific demands, which have conditioned full normalization on elections with international monitoring, a free press, and a legitimate National Electoral Council.
It also contrasts with the demands of the main opposition led by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, who were excluded from the formal dialogue table and are calling for tangible results—release of political prisoners, electoral guarantees, and the return of exiles—before validating any process.
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