Francisco Rodríguez

But

I don't see anything necessarily impeding that.

I mean, you have authoritarian governments in many other places, including many oil-dependent economies.

And there's a sense in which that oil wealth, which tends to make the state and the government very powerful, combined with these winner-take-all institutions, is the perfect recipe for autocracy.

So I do think that you could get that scenario in which

Darcy Rodriguez just becomes the country's new dictator.

The positive scenario is one in which the U.S.

uses its leverage towards building a democratic transition in Venezuela.

I don't think that that democratic transition can be built overnight, or at least I think it's very dangerous to do so.

And I think that the way to do it is to

carry out institutional reforms, reforms, for example, in electoral institutions, independence of the judiciary, start setting up the institutions of a democracy that also become the institutions that constrain the executive from persecuting its opponents so that when we get to an election, it's an election in which the losers can decide

okay, we're going to accept that we lost, and that doesn't mean that we're going to be persecuted and put in jail, and that it's the end of our political career and maybe of our lives.

Once you get there, you can have a free and fair election.

That, for me, is the best-case scenario, one of a democratic and prosperous Venezuela.

Is it possible?

Yes.

Is it assured?

No.

Thank you very much.

It was a pleasure.