This is John Batchel, speaking to colleague Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal editorial page about the risks in Venezuela.

The risks are not the government. It's ready to go. It's got an elected president, got a leader of the opposition, ready to start the country, a reawakening on hour one.

But security, Mary makes it very clear. Security must be guaranteed

and a lot of guns in Venezuela in the hands of bad guys. Here's Mary to explain. Much more of this

tonight. Well, I think in many ways it is credible, but the main concern is security.

I mean, you can't, you can have all the policymakers and economic advisors, you know, even politicians who are swearing an oath to democracy.

But if you don't have security, whoever has the guns and the tanks is going to be calling

the shots to enforce the new democracy to defend the rule of law.

And that's the part that I think there remains a lot of uncertainty about.

You know, the opposition has been working very hard,

both inside of Venezuela and outside of Venezuela,

to draw up these plans about, you know,

what the new government would look like,

who would be in charge of what.

I think they'll be quite ready on day one.

In answer to your question, Maria Corina Machado

is still in Venezuela by all reports.

I don't know where she is, but she's been in hiding for more than a year because they threatened to arrest her.

The president-elect, Edmundo Gonzalez, is in exile in Spain. But he would presumably come back very quickly, take the oath of office, and you would have legitimacy because this guy was elected and, you know, with something like 70% of the vote. That was the that was the tallies that the opposition put up at the time of the

election in July 24. So he has the legitimacy. And there's certainly a lot of educated

Venezuelans in exile, in Miami, in New York, and Boston, who are ready to, you know, to contribute to this effort.

But again, I stress that, you know, whoever has the guns is going to be the one that gets control of the country.

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