Venezuela’s opposition weakened when Biden should take office

Maduro said publicly that his government is willing to engage with the United States, although previous efforts to broker a dialogue have failed.

An official on President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team said he has no plans to negotiate with Maduro, adding that he has had no communications with the Venezuelan regime.

“President-elect Biden made it clear during the campaign and during the transition that he believes Maduro is a dictator and that the Biden government will be on the side of the Venezuelan people and his call for the restoration of democracy through free and fair elections,” said official said.

The United States, the official added, will seek to rebuild multilateral pressure on Maduro, call for the release of political prisoners, implement sanctions against Venezuelan officials guilty of corruption and human rights abuses and grant Temporary Protection Status to Venezuelans living in the country. WE

As Maduro tightens his grip on Congress, the country’s opposition will soon receive another blow. Some opposition lawmakers close to Guaidó plan to flee the country, fearing arrest if they remain in Venezuela, according to opposition activists. With no powers or control over the territory, what Guaidó and his team call the interim government is now little more than a virtual entity, making pro-democracy statements through social media and Zoom. The Trump administration said it still considers Guaidó Venezuela’s only democratically elected leader.

With many in the opposition leadership now outside Venezuela, Guaidó is increasingly isolated, living in a small apartment in Caracas with his wife and young daughter and wondering if the secret police are going to arrest him.

As Biden prepares to take office as president of the United States on January 20, Venezuelan opposition leaders say they are changing their strategy to spur a revolt to bring Maduro out of power. Instead, they said they would be more inclined to find a way to alleviate food and drug shortages in a country facing economic calamities. A third of Venezuelans do not have access to three meals a day, according to the UN World Food Program. Almost half suffer daily power cuts as they struggle to survive an annual inflation rate close to 12,000%, according to the Caracas business analyst Ecoanalítica.

Since the U.S. recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president in January 2019, Washington has imposed financial and oil sanctions and garnered international support for a move to oust Maduro. This effort failed.

Now, many opposition activists, as well as former advisers to President Trump, are saying that changes are needed.

“Guaidó’s entire interim government scheme probably survived,” said Juan Cruz, who previously advised the White House on Venezuela’s policy. He said the United States needs to reconsider its broad sanctions, which target state companies and figures accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

“January represents a new day for many players: the opposition, the US government and even the regime,” said Cruz.

Mr. Guaidó, in a recent video speech on Twitter, sought to instill confidence in his movement, ensuring that it is unified and would lead the country to free elections. “The dictatorship does not go away willingly and that is why we need to get them out,” he said.

He called on his supporters to protest on the streets on Tuesday as Maduro’s allies take their seats in the National Assembly. He also urged Venezuelan envoys operating in other countries to lobby the host nations to increase pressure on Maduro.

But he proposed little more. And in Venezuela, economic collapse and prisons have left most Venezuelans concerned with gaining access to scarce running water and fuel, rather than thinking about protests.

“You have lost the ability to mobilize people,” said Luis Vicente León, a political analyst who runs the research firm Datanálisis in Caracas. “Today, there is no one pressing Maduro inside Venezuela – no political negotiations, no electoral participation or protests. The result is a complete pulverization of the opposition. “

In a recent survey, Datanálisis found that only 25% of respondents said they hoped for a democratic transition in the country. Ecoanalítica estimates that the economy contracted 23% in 2020, after shrinking 40% a year earlier.

Hopelessness in the country is expected to increase the outflow of desperate Venezuelans, who now total five million. The Organization of American States estimates that the number of Venezuelan migrants could increase to seven million by the end of 2021, more than the number of Syrians who fled the brutal war in that country.

The political impasse is making it difficult to find solutions to the humanitarian crisis. Opposition lawmakers allied with Guaidó recently passed a resolution on a Zoom video conference calling for them to remain in office after Tuesday, when their five-year terms in Congress ended. They argued that the legislative elections that Maduro held last month were illegitimate, as were the United States and many other countries.

Maduro said in a recent speech that he would crack down on any legislator who tried to extend his term. “I will not be afraid to act strongly to enforce the law,” shouted the leftist leader in a speech broadcast on television, alongside the military high command.

But Guaidó also faces fissures in his own movement. Democratic Action, one of the main political parties in the opposition coalition, abstained from voting to keep Guaidó as head of the assembly. Some lawmakers said they had lost faith in their team.

Oscar Ronderos, a Democratic Action legislator, described the current opposition movement as “an interim government that does not exist, in a National Assembly that serves no one”.

“It makes very little sense to continue” the movement led by Guaidó after January 5, he said.

The movement’s internal discord, according to opposition parliamentarians, could further undermine its credibility, especially among European Union countries that advocate negotiations with the regime to allow humanitarian aid and later an agreement on free elections.

In recent weeks, the Maduro regime has shown its repression by arbitrarily detaining directors of organizations that provide food to poor Venezuelans and sentencing six former Citgo executives to long prison terms. The United States government has said that executives – five of whom are American citizens – are being unjustly detained.

“Instead of generating confidence, it is decreasing confidence”, for the hopes of negotiation, said Cruz.

Julio Borges, who since exile in Colombia has been the main diplomat of the Guaidó movement, said he hopes the United States and its allies will not be easy with Maduro.

“The most important thing for the democratic struggle in Venezuela is that Maduro has not yet managed to stabilize the country or increase its popularity,” said Borges.

—Ginette Gonzalez in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this article.

Write to Kejal Vyas at [email protected]