Marco Rubio assures that there will be free elections in Venezuela: 'We must be patient, but not complacent'

Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, assured Monday that Venezuela will have free elections, and explained that what has been achieved by the Administration of President Donald Trump in recent months in the South American country after the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro on January 3 has been positive, taking into account the changes that have occurred in such a short time. During an interview with the conservative Fox News network, Rubio also stressed that, far from being the kind of rigged and unguaranteed electoral event that Venezuela's socialist regime has been organizing in recent years, the democratic transition in the South American country will take place through free and transparent elections.

“Only three months have passed, and what has been achieved in Venezuela in just that time is nothing short of extraordinary. Ultimately, there will have to be a transition phase. There will have to be free and fair elections in Venezuela, and that moment has to come. We have to be patient, but we also cannot be complacent. And that is why I feel very good about the progress made in Venezuela in three months,” the secretary of state said during the interview with journalist Sean Hannity.

Since Maduro's removal, his replacement as the top figure within the Chavista regime has been Delcy Rodríguez, who has been tutored by the White House to take different types of measures within the framework of recovery and transition that Rubio has expressed on numerous occasions. The situation is deeply humiliating for Chavismo, taking into account that, throughout the last 20 years, it has been proclaiming itself as the bastion of anti-imperialism, being a dictatorship that time and again has expressed its rejection of both the U.S. government and its society and culture.

A word on Cuba and Iran

During the Fox News interview, Rubio also spoke about Cuba, in what the Trump Administration itself has described as the imminent fall of its regime, which would represent an absolutely historic event in Latin America, being a dictatorship that has not only been long-lived, but also influential in the political reality of the region.

Rubio told Hannity that the communist regime needs to implement economic and political reforms, and that the White House will soon have more news on that country, "So I think Cuba is in need of two things, economic reforms and political reforms, you cannot fix their economy if you ⁠don't change their system of government," the secretary of state said.

On the issue of the war in Iran, Rubio promised that, although the end of the war conflict will not take place "tomorrow," it will come sooner than expected. "We can see the finish line. It’s not today, it's not tomorrow, but it's coming; we’re going to get to the point where our military will have achieved all the objectives of this mission," Rubio said on Fox News, a few hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that Trump will issue a major address to the nation on Iran this Wednesday, April 1.