CARACAS — Venezuela's crowded transition landscape gained a new entrant this week. Enrique Márquez, a former vice-rector of the National Electoral Council (CNE) and a minor candidate in the 2024 presidential election, unveiled the "Pacto por Venezuela" on Thursday at Caracas's JW Marriott hotel — a five-point framework he says should guide the country's rebuilding after Nicolás Maduro's removal. The plan lands seven months into a standoff that has already produced a constitutionally overdue interim government and left the opposition's most popular figure watching from abroad.
Who Is Enrique Márquez?
Márquez spent his career inside Venezuela's electoral machinery rather than as a street-level opposition organizer, representing Zulia state in the National Assembly across two non-consecutive stints before serving as CNE vice-rector from 2021 to 2023. His 2024 presidential run drew little support — he finished ninth out of ten candidates on the ballot, taking roughly a quarter of one percent of the vote, according to the CNE's own contested tally — but he joined other opposition figures that same week in rejecting the council's declaration of a Maduro victory. That defiance cost him just over a year behind bars on coup-plotting accusations, from January 2025 to January 2026; he emerged among the earliest opposition figures freed as Venezuela's political-prisoner releases began, according to Infobae. He was also recognized as a guest at President Trump's February 24, 2026 State of the Union address, a credential he now leans on to frame himself as a Washington-recognized voice — even as he has publicly ruled out seeking a CNE seat or a future presidential bid of his own.
Five Pillars, No Party Behind Them
Márquez was emphatic that the Pacto is not a party or a movement but an open document belonging to neither the ruling camp nor the opposition. It rests on five pillars: overhauling the judiciary and reforming the laws governing the Supreme Tribunal and the public prosecutor's office to guarantee separation of powers; pursuing international cooperation to trace and repatriate state assets siphoned off through corruption; restoring civil and political rights, including near-term elections for unions, trade guilds and communal councils; rewriting electoral rules to seat a technically credible new CNE, lift political disqualifications, add a presidential runoff, end indefinite reelection and revive a bicameral legislature with proportional representation for political minorities; and protecting private property, including reversing past expropriations and honoring commercial commitments made during the transition. Márquez said the document has already gone to U.S. officials and to the negotiating table between the ruling party and the 2015-elected National Assembly, with instructions that it be freely revised.
He folded the plan into the U.S.-brokered three-phase framework — stabilization, recovery, transition — that Washington has steered since Maduro's ouster, describing the American role as a form of "tutelaje," or guardianship, that he argued Venezuela still needs. "Nadie va a reconstruir Venezuela por nosotros, nadie," he said — no one is going to rebuild Venezuela for us, no one — insisting allied support remains essential. On the reasoning behind restoring a bicameral Congress, he was blunter still, arguing in Spanish that "whoever wins takes it all," and that no single branch should control both the executive and the legislature. He also voiced support for the dialogue led by opposition lawmaker Dinorah Figuera, framing the Pacto as a complement rather than a rival proposal, and the document explicitly calls for the safe return of exiled leaders, naming María Corina Machado among them.
The U.S. Role: Guardianship With a Paper Trail
Márquez's "tutelaje" framing is more than rhetoric. A TIME Magazine investigation published in late July reported that Washington's top diplomat, Marco Rubio, effectively co-runs the fund overseeing Venezuela's oil income and public finances together with Rodríguez, weighing in by phone and WhatsApp on everything from export revenue to cabinet picks. One ex-envoy who once represented Washington in Caracas coined a nickname for the setup when he spoke to TIME: "the Rodrígato" — shorthand for a government that keeps its own seat while executing Washington's agenda.
Where That Leaves Delcy Rodríguez
Márquez's plan arrives as the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's former vice president, sits in a widening legal gray zone. Rodríguez was sworn in January 5, 2026 under the constitutional provision covering a presidential vacancy, a mandate capped at 180 days. That window lapsed July 3 without new elections called or a fresh succession process announced, prompting the rights group Acceso a la Justicia to warn Venezuela had entered a period of open, unprecedented unconstitutionality, according to Infobae. The dispute has only deepened since: by early August, Rodríguez had passed 200 days in office, and even chavista officials had begun dropping the word "encargada" — "acting" — from her title, even as Washington continues to use that term. Rodríguez has kept governing regardless, reshuffling 25 of the ministers she inherited from Maduro across 18 of 34 ministries in her first seven months, according to El Nacional. Unlike Márquez's proposal, her administration was never framed as a transition blueprint — critics call it a chavista-controlled holdover rather than a bridge to elections, precisely the gap Márquez's pact is positioned to highlight.
Where Machado Stands
María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, has deliberately stayed off the current negotiating table, which runs through the 2015 National Assembly rather than her own coalition. Analysts believe she is conserving her political capital for the moment an actual electoral calendar is set, rather than spending it on institutional back-and-forth now, according to Diario Las Américas. She has said her return to Venezuela will be coordinated with Washington as part of the same three-phase plan Márquez supports, has separately cast doubt on whether Rodríguez's government reflects ordinary Venezuelans, and has announced she intends to run for the presidency again once elections are called. Márquez said Thursday that he plans to present the Pacto to Machado directly and seek her endorsement, an overture she had not publicly answered as of this writing.
Why South Florida Is Watching
For the more than 1.1 million Venezuelan Americans nationwide, concentrated most heavily in South Florida and Houston, this standoff is not an abstraction. It will help determine when, or whether, a credible electoral calendar emerges — a question with new weight after the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on August 14 that Temporary Protected Status termination for Venezuelans is now in effect, per USCIS.gov. The termination is not absolute: Venezuelans who received TPS documentation before February 5, 2025 with an October 2, 2026 expiration retain status until that date under ongoing litigation, but an estimated 600,000 Venezuelans are expected to be affected overall. A genuine, internationally recognized path to elections would matter directly to families in Doral and other diaspora hubs weighing if, and when, it might be safe to return.
Márquez said his team will open a digital platform for public feedback and travel the country gathering input before finalizing the Pacto, with no set deadline. Whether it becomes a genuine bridge between the Rodríguez government, the AN-2015 dialogue and Machado's camp — or simply the latest entry in a crowded field — should become clearer once the ongoing talks over renewing the Supreme Tribunal and the CNE produce results, which a coalition of civil-society groups has pressed negotiators to deliver before December.
