Delcy Rodríguez promises a new stage of hope after 100 days at the head of Venezuela

Caracas.- The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, promised this Sunday a new stage of hope for the country after just over 100 days of having assumed the position, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States last January in Caracas.

"These 100 days are not a destination, they are the beginning of a new stage, a stage to recover hope, to encourage confidence, to meet again among Venezuelans and to guarantee the future of our youth," he said in a message broadcast by the state channel VTV.

The president assured that "firm steps have been taken towards the consolidation of a new historical moment", among which she mentioned the reform of the oil law and the approval of mining regulations in order to have "clear rules to attract investment, technology, productive development and the creation of new jobs".

"We open our doors to the world with the certainty that we can move forward, without ever renouncing sovereignty over our resources," clarified Rodríguez, who assured that the country has accumulated twenty quarters of economic growth.

The Chavista leader celebrated that Venezuela has "returned to the international stage" and that hundreds of companies are showing "interest in investing in the country." In time, the nation will regain its "representation in the International Monetary Fund, opening access to resources for health, basic services, strategic national production, and stabilization of international reserves," he said. "I recognize the high expectations of our population and our teams are working to achieve improvements within reasonable timeframes and with verifiable facts, but we are taking the first steps," the official said. Rodríguez plans to announce on May 1st an increase in the minimum wage, frozen since March 2022 at 130 bolívares monthly, equivalent today to about 27 cents of a dollar at the official rate.

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He also indicated that today Venezuela is located "among the safest countries in the region, with three homicides per 100,000 inhabitants". Furthermore, the amnesty approved in February by Parliament, which has benefited "more than 8,000 Venezuelans," was highlighted as one of the steps taken during this period. In a previous act, Rodríguez announced that this coming week a "great national consultation for the new justice" will be installed, one that, he said, does not criminalize poverty. "I ask that we go to a truly humane justice system, that it be a justice system that truly honors its word and that opens up to alternative mechanisms to deprivation of liberty," he explained without giving further details. The official led this Sunday in the state of Zulia (northwest, bordering Colombia) the beginning of the thirteen-day pilgrimage she convened to demand an end to the sanctions and said that "millions of boys and girls were born" during "these ten years of economic blockade". "Those boys, those girls, don't know what a country in economic freedom, in social welfare, is, and that's why it's up to us. If we have to walk, go around the planet a hundred times to get Venezuela free of sanctions, we will be there, walking united," he added.