Nicolas Maduro’s stage-managing of his inauguration for a third term as the President of Venezuela is now a done deal. That the National Electoral Council, which declared him the winner of last July 28th elections, has yet to produce the tally-sheets from the voting machines to prove their assertion – as they have done in previous elections – is proof positive that the electoral mechanism was manipulated in his favour. The ability of his opponent Eduardo Gonzalez to produce such proof has not been contradicted. The Carter Center, which had once declared Venezuela’s voting system the best in the world, agreed that Maduro gamed the result. That the latter has thumbed his nose at the world once again and is being allowed to get away with it would only encourage widening of the ambit of his ire beyond his bullyism towards Guyana, which he considers incapable of countering him.
We note the response of the United States, which had worked assiduously to have the Barbados Agreement – which Maduro signed – guide the conduct of the elections, only to see each and every term either traduced or observed in the breach. In the words of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: “Today, Nicolás Maduro held an illegitimate presidential inauguration in Venezuela in a desperate attempt to seize power. The Venezuelan people and world know the truth – Maduro clearly lost the 2024 presidential election, and has no right to claim the presidency. The United States rejects the National Electoral Council’s fraudulent announcement that Maduro won the presidential election, and does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the President of Venezuela. President-elect Edmundo González Urrutia should be sworn-in, and the democratic transition should begin. We stand ready to support a return to democracy in Venezuela.”
But we note that a similar commitment was given by the previous administration of President Donald Trump to Juan Guaido, who had won the 2018 elections. The steps they took to return democracy to Venezuela did not produce the desired result. Eerily, it would appear that the Biden Administration was not even willing to widen those measures, but rather to constrict them. Blinken’s statement continued: “The Department of State is increasing the reward offers to up to $25 million each for information leading to the arrests and/or convictions of Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s Minister of Interior, Diosdado Cabello. The Department of State is also adding a new reward offer of up to $15 million for Maduro’s Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino López. These three reward offers stem from criminal narco-trafficking indictments announced in March 2020. The State Department is also taking steps to impose new visa restrictions on Maduro-aligned individuals for their roles in undermining the electoral process or in acts of repression in Venezuela. To date, the Department of State has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on nearly 2,000 Maduro-aligned individuals.
“Alongside similar actions taken today by partners, including Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, Treasury’s sanctions demonstrate a message of solidarity with the Venezuelan people, and further elevate international efforts to maintain pressure on Maduro and his representatives.” While we recognize that the Biden Administration is in the last week of its term, its unwillingness to terminate the licence it renewed for Chevron to restart production and shipment of Venezuelan oil signals an undercutting of the abovementioned personal sanctions, which work to merely restrict the movement of the affected individuals.
We look to the incoming Administration of President Donald Trump, who would be sworn-in this coming Friday, to rectify matters. He has sworn to “Make America Great Again”, and has shown he understands that part of that lost greatness was America’s ability to project its power beyond its borders, especially in defense of the rules-based order it articulated as far back as 1823 with its “Monroe Doctrine”. It is ironic that the first exercise of that doctrine was against Britain, at the request of Venezuela, to have its border with British Guiana settled.
Last week, in a further insult to the US, Maduro promised to elect a governor for Essequibo, whereas the US-arranged 1899 treaty had conclusively settled that border controversy.
