"I want to say this very clearly before this General Assembly: there will be elections in Venezuela." With this sentence, interim President Delcy Rodríguez tried to reassure the world stage that the country is heading towards "full democracy". What she didn't say is when.

Rodríguez came to power after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a January operation. She now claims the government has begun talks with the opposition, will guarantee the participation of all political forces, and that state institutions are preparing for the electoral process. Venezuela, she says, has launched "a process of democratic transformation" - orderly, institutional and verifiable - towards a country that is "freer for all, more prosperous and reconciled with itself".

The opposition wants judges first, then a vote

Venezuelan and American authorities have talked about the need for elections before, but there is still no date, not even a tentative one. The opposition argues that before elections can be called, an independent Supreme Court and an independent National Electoral Council must be appointed first. What's a vote worth when it isn't clear who will count the ballots? In the Balkans, that question is anything but theoretical.

The debt, Rubio and the condition

On Tuesday, on the sidelines of the General Assembly, Rodríguez briefly met Donald Trump and praised him for reopening dialogue with Venezuela. According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the two discussed restructuring the country's multi-billion-dollar sovereign debt, while Washington insisted on political change. "In the end, we stressed that for this project to succeed, it has to end with free and fair elections," Rubio said.

But the same US has said that before elections, Venezuela must first stabilise and recover economically. "This is a time to build a country that many people want to come back to," Rodríguez said, warning that economic recovery "will take time". When both Washington and Caracas say "economy first, then a vote", and nobody says for how long, the promise that "there will be elections" remains a promise with no deadline. How long can a "transition" last when nobody wants to say the date out loud?