VENEZUELA AT THE CROSSROADS

On 23rd January 2019, Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly (AN, parliament) declared himself ‘interim president’ of his country. He cited articles of the Venezuelan constitution which state that the president of the AN takes charge in the case of “absolute absence of the President of the Republic” for reasons of “death, resignation, removal from office by ruling of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, and with approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of office, duly declared by the National Assembly; and repeal by popular vote”.

The trouble for Mr Guaidó was that Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, was alive, he had not resigned, the Supreme Court of Justice (controlled by his government) had not endorsed his removal, that no medical board had examined him and decided that he was physically and mentally disable; he had not abandoned office and he had been elected by the majority of Venezuelans. Although the opposition argued that Mr Maduro’s election had been the result of a massive fraud, it could not prove this was the case simply because it had boycotted the May 2018 presidential election. Furthermore, spokespeople of the only opposition candidate who had decided to stand against Mr Maduro, Henri Falcón, declared that there had not been fraud and that Maduro had won because the opposition failed to support Mr Falcón.

As we learned later, many people in the opposition were caught by surprise. Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate, declared that members of the opposition had not been consulted on Mr Guaidó’s self-proclamation.  

It didn’t take long for the United States and the most prominent right-wing governments of Latin America to recognise Guaidó’s ‘presidency’. Following the self-proclamation, an emergency session of the Organisation of American States, the OAS, took place in Washington, to discuss the political crisis in Venezuela and the recognition of Guaidó’s ‘government’. It failed to do so. The OAS needs at least 18 votes out of the 35 member states to pass a resolution. In May 2018, nineteen countries rejected the presidential election and the same number spurned Mr Maduro’s inauguration in January 2019. But only 16 countries recognised Mr Guaidó as president of Venezuela.

Juan Guaidó’s game had been carefully planned by his clique and the United States government. In late January, the Associated Press, a news agency that can hardly be accused of harbouring sympathies for the Maduro government, published the result of an investigation on the opposition’s activities. According to AP, Mr Guaidó secretly travelled to the US, Colombia and Brazil to gather support for his self-proclamation.

Mr Guaidó believed that Maduro’s government would fall in a matter of weeks, and that the armed forces would switch sides as soon as they realised that the government’s position was unsustainable.

Two days after the 23rd January self-proclamation, the Minister of Defence, General Vladimir Padrino, together with the high command of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) and the security forces, issued a strong statement reiterating their support of Nicolás Maduro’s government. In the following days, the heads of the main army regions issued similar statements.

Mr Guaidó’s insistence that he was negotiating with high ranking commanders of the FANB their allegiance to his presidency turned out to be pie in the sky. So far, the FANB remains loyal to Mr Maduro.

A month after his self-proclamation, Mr Guaidó decided to change tactics. He announced that a convoy of humanitarian aid, sent by the United States, would enter Venezuela from Colombia in order to distribute basic supplies of food and medicines. Almost immediately after this announcement, the Colombian Red Cross announced that they would not help with the distribution of such ‘aid’ because it was heavily politicised. The Red Cross made it very clear that any kind of humanitarian aid should be politically neutral. The Maduro government immediately closed the border with Colombia and the convoy failed to reach its destination. At the time, there were clashes between opposition activists and the security forces and some lorries were set on fire. The international pro-opposition media accused Maduro’s government of burning the aid. A few days ago, the New York Times admitted that, in fact, the fires had been caused by Molotov bombs thrown by opposition thugs.

On the 22nd February, the British tax-exile multimillionaire Richard Branson, organised a concert in the Colombian city of Cúcuta in aid of Venezuela. He was hopping to raise $100 million. It was supposed to be a watershed in the campaign by the Venezuelan opposition to bring down Mr Maduro. Today, the concert is all but a distant memory and no news of the $100 million is known. At the time, Roger Waters, founder of Pink Floyd attacked Branson’s plans as a gimmick which would not benefit the people of Venezuela.

Until now, the US government has not been able to fulfil its own expectation in relation to Venezuela. If anything, it has suffered setbacks.

In late February, the Group of Lima, a loose body of 14 Latin American countries that support Mr Guaidó (Mexico decided to leave the group after Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as president) met in Bogotá to discuss the crisis in Venezuela. The US vice-president Mike Pence and Juan Guaidó himself attended the meeting. Until then, the US government had not ruled out a military intervention in Venezuela. At the end of the meeting, the Group of Lima issued a statement declaring its opposition to an external military intervention in Venezuela. This was followed by a similar declaration from the European Union. Crucially, Brazil and Colombia, also rejected any kind of military invasion. This is very important because both countries have borders with Venezuela.

Mr Guaidó’s ‘presidency’ has been recognised by 50 countries around the world. However, media organisations, including those who are not unsympathetic to the Venezuelan opposition, have refused to describe Mr Guaidó as ‘interim president’. In a press briefing in early March, the State Department’s spokesperson, Michael Palladino, expressed his disappointment that the media still referred to Mr Guaidó a ‘leader of the opposition’ or ‘president of the National Assembly’ and not as the ‘interim president’ of Venezuela. “Millions of Americans and more than 50 countries recognize Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela, so to refer to Juan Guaidó as anything but interim president falls into the narrative of a dictator who has usurped the position of the presidency and led Venezuela into the humanitarian, political, and economic crisis that exists today” said Palladino. Immediately he got a rebuttal from the Associated Press’ diplomatic correspondent, Matt Lee: “You consider him to be the interim president, and as you say, 50 other countries… recognize him as the interim president. But there are more than 190 members of the United Nations. So, your 50 countries is not even close to half of that. Is that correct?” “We support the people of Venezuela” mumbled Palladino.

Juan Guaidó’s ‘presidency’ is more a symbolic than an effective ne. He does not control Venezuela, the armed forces remain loyal to Nicolás Maduro, most of the states (Venezuela is a federal republic) are controlled by governors from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the government controls the judiciary, the electoral commission and the state-owned oil company PDVESA.

In the meantime, the economic crisis in Venezuela deepens. On 7th of March, a major blackout submerged most of the country in total darkness. The government of Mr Maduro blamed the United States and the opposition for provoking the breakdown in the hydroelectric plant of Guri, which supplies 70% of Venezuela’s electricity. So far, the government has failed to provide concrete evidence that the collapse of the Gurr plant was indeed caused by sabotage. It is perfectly possible that the breakdown is the result of years of underinvestment in Venezuela’s energy infrastructure.

The perfect storm

This is the latest chapter in the history of Venezuela’s economic crisis. Behind this crisis, there is a combination of incompetence and corruption on the part of Maduro’s government and sanctions that are affecting the import of food and medical supplies. Only in 2017, Citibank refused to approve the purchase of 300 doses of insulin; the US blockaded a bank deposit made by the Venezuelan government at the UBS Swiss Bank for the acquisition of vaccines; imports of anti-malaria treatment from the BSN Laboratory were prevented by the Colombian government, and Baster, Abbot and Pfizer, three of the biggest pharmaceutical multinationals in the world refused to issue export certificates for cancer drugs for Venezuela. Banks in Europe and the US are the subject of sanctions if they do business with Venezuela, thus preventing the government from importing food and other supplies.

At the same time, the Maduro government has contributed to this crisis. Until recently, the government had in place a strict exchange rate control. This gave way to a thriving black market where Venezuelans could buy the local currency, the Bolívar, using US dollars, at rates which are more than ten thousand times higher than the official rate. This has fuelled hyperinflation.

Furthermore, Hugo Chávez made a serious mistake: he increased Venezuela’s dependency on oil as the country’s main source of hard currency to up to 97%. The Venezuelan economy never diversified and imports most of the food it consumes. In order to tackle food shortages, the government has put in practice a system of distribution of food for the poorest barrios of Venezuela, but many corrupt officials have taken advantage of this system to steal food and sell it at inflated prices. Add to these those private food distributors who hide basic produce (flour, pasta, sugar, cooking oil) in order to sell them at high prices and you find the Venezuelan people sandwiched between corrupt functionaries and sleazy private suppliers.  

The government has partially lifted the exchange rate controls but it will take many years for that measure to help reduce inflation. Also, the Constituent Assembly that was elected in 2017 with only pro-government constituents (the opposition boycotted the election) has included in the country’s constitution measures to create a post-oil economy. This is, by any stretch of the imagination, a futile gesture because an article in the constitution will not change the dynamic of the situation from one day to another, and it will take many years for that post-oil economy to become a reality.

Venezuela is indeed facing an economic, political and social crisis. It is cruelly ironic that the country that has the biggest reserves of oil in the world suffers extreme poverty and a crisis in its health service. In the meantime, the US is trying very hard to provoke regime change in order exploit Venezuela’s oil wealth. In early January, John Bolton, Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser told Fox News that “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

In the late 1980s, during the Reagan administration, Elliot Abrams, an adviser of the president, was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He justified the use of humanitarian aid convoys to smuggle weapons for the contra revolution in Nicaragua. He also broke the law by helping the contra despite the fact that the US congress had cut funding for such activities. He also lied about his role in the affair. He pleaded guilty in 1991 and was pardoned by president George H W Bush. In April 2002, during the failed coup attempt against president Hugo Chávez, he was an adviser at the White House and was instrumental in the support the US government gave to the new ‘government’. The coup lasted 48 hours. Abrams is now the US special envoy for Venezuela.

Venezuela has become a pawn in a game of geopolitics, a mini cold war fought by proxy. On the one hand, the US and some of its allies support the opposition. On the other, Russia, China, Turkey and most countries in the developing world support Maduro.

It is clear, however, that the only way out of this crisis is a dialogue between the government and the opposition. The European Union wants a summit, with the support of Mexico and Uruguay. New elections are an option that should be seriously considered. But these elections would have to be agreed by both sides, without pressure or ultimatums from outside forces. There should also be an agreement that should help tackle the serious economic crisis that is affecting millions of Venezuelans. Otherwise, the possibility of a civil war cannot be ruled out. And the US needs to be isolated and cast out of any negotiation because it is clear that Washington is after Venezuela’s oil.

The land of Bolívar deserves better than what they have now.