Venezuela’s opposition weakened when Biden took office

Maduro has said publicly that his administration is ready to engage with the US, although previous attempts to establish dialogue have failed.

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

President-elect Biden has been clear throughout the campaign and transition that he believes Maduro is a dictator and that Biden’s government will support the Venezuelan people and make their call for a restoration of democracy through free and fair elections, “said the official. said.

The US, the official added, will seek to rebuild multilateral pressure on Mr Maduro, call for the release of political prisoners, impose sanctions on Venezuelan officials guilty of corruption and human rights violations, and temporary protected status grant to Venezuelans living in the US. U.S

As Mr Maduro tightens his grip on Congress, the country’s opposition will soon be hit again. Some remaining opposition lawmakers close to Guaidó plan to flee the country, fearing imprisonment if they stay in Venezuela, opposition activists said. With no powers or control over territory, what Guaidó and his team call an interim government is now nothing more than a virtual entity, making pro-democracy statements through social media and Zoom. The Trump administration has said it still views Guaidó as Venezuela’s only democratically elected leader.

With many in the opposition leadership outside Venezuela, Mr Guaidó is becoming increasingly isolated. He lives in a small apartment in Caracas with his wife and little daughter and wonders if the secret police will arrest him.

As Mr Biden prepares to be inaugurated as president of the US on January 20, Venezuelan opposition leaders said they are moving away from strategies to provoke an uprising to force Maduro from power. Instead, they said they would be more inclined to find a way to alleviate food and drug shortages in a country facing economic disasters. According to the UN’s World Food Program, one third of Venezuelans do not have access to three meals a day. According to Caracas business consultancy Ecoanalítica, as many as half of them face daily power outages as they struggle to make ends meet with annual inflation of nearly 12,000%.

Since the US first recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president in January 2019, Washington has imposed oil and financial sanctions and amassed international support for a move to overthrow Maduro. That attempt failed.

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

“The entire arrangement of Guaidó’s interim administration has probably survived its life,” said Juan Cruz, who previously advised the White House on Venezuela’s policies. He said the US should reconsider its wide-ranging sanctions targeting state-owned companies and figures accused of corruption and human rights violations.

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

Mr Guaidó, in a recent video address on Twitter, sought to instill confidence in his movement by assuring that it is united and would lead the country to free elections. “The dictatorship will not leave voluntarily, so we have to force them to leave,” he said.

He called on supporters to protest in 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 host countries to increase pressure on Maduro.

But he suggested little else. And in Venezuela, the economic crisis and prisons have preoccupied most Venezuelans with access to scarce running water and fuel instead of thinking about protests.

“You have lost the ability to mobilize people,” said Luis Vicente León, a political analyst who heads the Caracas polling station Datanálisis. Today, no one is pressuring Maduro in Venezuela – no political negotiations, no electoral participation or protests. The result is the complete crushing of the opposition. “

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

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

The political impasse makes the search for solutions to the humanitarian crisis difficult. Opposition lawmakers linked to Mr Guaidó recently passed a resolution on a Zoom video conference calling for them to remain in office after Tuesday, when their five-year congressional term ended. They argued that Mr Maduro’s parliamentary elections held last month were illegal, as was the US and many other countries.

Mr Maduro said in a recent speech that he would crack down on lawmakers trying to extend their mandate. “I will not be afraid to act fiercely to enforce the law,” the left-wing leader shouted in the televised address, flanked by the military high command.

But Mr Guaidó is also dealing with cracks in his own movement. Democratic Action, one of the main political parties in the opposition coalition, abstained on retaining Mr Guaidó as head of the assembly. Some lawmakers said they have lost faith in his team.

Oscar Ronderos, a lawmaker for democratic action, described the current opposition movement as “an interim government that does not exist, in a national assembly that serves no one”.

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

The movement’s internal disagreements could further damage credibility, according to opposition lawmakers, especially between countries in the European Union advocating for 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 imprisoning the directors of organizations providing food to poor Venezuelans and sentencing six former Citgo executives to lengthy prison terms. The US government has said the executives – five of whom are US citizens – are being held unjustly.

“Rather than building trust, trust is eroding,” said Mr. Cruz.

Julio Borges, who serves as the top diplomat for Mr Guaidó’s movement from exile in Colombia, said he does not expect the US and its allies to make it easy against Maduro.

“Most important to the democratic struggle in Venezuela is that Maduro is still unable to stabilize the country or increase its popularity,” said Mr. Borges.

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

Write to Kejal Vyas at [email protected]