Venezuela’s Guaido won a temporary victory. Now, he should go on the offensive and consider authorizing clandestine food airdrops
Venezuela’s National Assembly President Juan Guaidó won an important battle by overcoming the Venezuelan dictatorship’s clumsy attempt to forcefully take over the country’s opposition-led congress. But to keep this from being a short-lived win, Venezuela’s opposition will have to go on the offensive, and take much bolder steps.
One of the many ideas making the rounds in opposition circles is that Guaidó, who is recognized by more than 50 countries as Venezuela’s legitimate president, consider authorizing clandestine airdrops of humanitarian aid. That could help put Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro’s regime on the defensive, and put the opposition back in the driver’s seat.
Until now, Guaidó has tried to do everything abiding by Venezuela’s laws. But the Maduro regime has violated almost every law in the Venezuelan Constitution, starting with rigging the 2018 elections that resulted in his fraudulent re-election.
It may be time for Gauidó to take off his gloves. If Guaidó doesn’t do something dramatic, he may be fraudulently pushed out of office in upcoming legislative elections scheduled for late this year. Maduro has already said that he will retake control of the National Assembly in the upcoming legislative elections.
On Jan. 5, Maduro tried to do that head of time, orchestrating the sham election of a new National Assembly leader, Oscar Parra. He was a former opposition congressman who was expelled from his party for corruption, and switched sides.
Parra proclaimed himself as new National Assembly president in an improvised congressional session without quorum, in which military guards prevented Guaidó and other opposition congressmen from entering the National Assembly building for the voting.
Guaidó and his fellow opposition legislators had to move to the offices of the daily El Nacional, where Guaidó he got a quorum and was re-elected as National Assembly president with 100 votes, many more than the 84 votes he needed.
Earlier, several opposition legislators disclosed that the government had offered them bribes ranging from 500,000 to 1 million dollars if they voted against Guaidó on Jan 5.
In addition, the Maduro dictatorship had filed lawsuits against 29 opposition congressmen under bogus charges, despite their congressional immunity. Two of the opposition legislators are in jail, and most of the rest had to flee the country or seek refuge at foreign embassies.
Although no democratic country in the world will take Parra’s legislative leadership seriously, Maduro will now have two loyalist bodies - Parra’s faction of the National Assembly and the Maduro-created Constituent Assembly - to help confuse Venezuelans and the international community.
Amid growing government repression, the Venezuelan opposition faces an uphill battle to retain its congressional control. It will have little choice but to go on the offensive.
Guaidó should take advantage of the fact that after last weekend’s events, he has regained the spotlight. The picture of him climbing over a military-guarded fence to make his way to the National Assembly circulated world-wide. Opposition parties that were fighting with one another over whether to participate in the next congressional elections are more united behind him than before.
Considering that Venezuela’s military hierarchy continues to support Maduro, and that a foreign military intervention is neither likely nor desirable, Guaidó’s most effective move may be to set in motion clandestine airdrops of humanitarian aid, and have opposition parties distribute it across the country.
The United States and several other countries tried to send more than $100 million in food and medicine to Guaido’s parallel government in early 2019, but Maduro’s military blocked its entry at the Colombian border. That was a major blow to the Guaido-led opposition, from which it has yet to recover.
Since then, Venezuela’s tragedy has worsened. The number of Venezuelans who have fled the country has risen from 3 million to more than 4.7 million. More than 6,800 people have been killed by Maduro’s forces, most of them opposition demonstrators killed in extrajudicial executions, according to the United Nations.
Venezuela’s opposition, which still controls many local governments, could become an unbeatable political force by giving away desperately-needed food and medicines. It needs to do something dramatic, and that could be one of its next steps.
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This story was originally published January 12, 2020 at 1:18 PM.
