Venezuela’s Guaidó ends a troubled year in office with electoral hurdles ahead
When Juan Guaidó burst onto the political scene in Venezuela a year ago Thursday, he was a young and obscure politician with an audacious plan. By harnessing the anger of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans — and with the support of the international community — he intended to force Nicolás Maduro out of power, set up a transitional government and hold free elections.
For the first few months, it seemed plausible. As protests swelled, the United States and more than 50 other countries declared Guaidó, the president of the National Assembly, Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Amid mounting sanctions and saber rattling from Washington, U.S. diplomats promised that Maduro’s days were numbered, that he had an airplane idling on the tarmac waiting to whisk him away to exile in Cuba.
A year later, the world is still waiting.
If Guaidó’s first year in power was about trying to force political change, his second one could be far more delicate — trying to navigate at least one, perhaps two, elections that will determine his political survival.
Under Venezuela’s constitution, the National Assembly that Guaidó presides over must hold new elections this year, and that’s reviving a long-running debate: Should the opposition participate in a flawed and unfair process and try to retain some power or should it boycott entirely?
Winston Flores is a Guaidó ally and one of 35 Venezuelan opposition lawmakers now living in exile, many of whom fled the country after being threatened with arrest. Speaking from Guatemala, Flores said it’s clear that Maduro is using the legislative elections to seize control of congress, the last opposition stronghold.
Vote or Boycott?
“We have to explain to the world that any election called by a regime that’s not recognized by almost 60 countries is a sham, it’s one more act of fraud committed against the people of Venezuela,” he said. “We’re not up against a democratic leadership, it shouldn’t even be considered a dictatorship — because a dictatorship might give in to pressure — this is a regime of delinquents and criminals.”
The opposition has boycotted elections before, including the 2018 presidential race, elections for the National Constituent Assembly in 2017 and parliamentary elections in 2005. In all three cases regime loyalists won by a landslide, leaving the opposition weaker.
“There will be legislative elections whether the opposition participates or not,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C.-based think tank. “Abstaining on principle is a strategy that has already been played out and it hasn’t played out in the opposition’s favor.”
Instead, Ramsey argues the opposition should learn from last year’s presidential election in Bolivia, where candidates went in knowing that President Evo Morales would try to cling to power. Allegations of fraud eventually forced Morales to step down and flee to Mexico.
In Bolivia “the opposition was organized enough to document the fraud and prove it to the world and [Bolivia’s] military, and it triggered a transition,” Ramsey said. “But many in the [Venezuelan] opposition aren’t interested in taking that shot. There are growing voices in the opposition insisting that they have done all they can in Venezuela and it’s time for the international community to solve the problem for them.”
Maduro, 57, came to power in 2013 after the death of his mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez. He maintains that an election in 2018 — decried as fraudulent by the international community — gives him the right to rule through 2025. His tenure has been disastrous. More than 4 million people have fled the country amid poverty and political persecution. And yet Maduro has managed to hang on with the support of the military, Cuba, Russia, China and a few other international partners.
Opposition reluctance to go to elections with him at the helm is understandable. During the 2018 presidential election, most of Maduro’s serious rivals were either imprisoned or exiled. More recently, on Jan. 5, the regime used bribes and jail to try to supplant Guaidó as the head of congress. The scheme, dubbed “Operation Scorpion,” took a darker turn last week. As Guaidó and opposition deputies tried to make their way into the National Assembly, they were blocked by pro-government mobs and one of their cars was hit by a bullet. Flores said it was a clear attempt to assassinate Guaidó.
“They’re doing everything they can to finish destroying the National Assembly,” he said. “But if we have to go into hiding to keep working, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll find other ways to resist.”
But there are also threats from within.
If Guaidó, for whatever reason, were to lose his perch as president of the National Assembly, he loses his constitutional justification for claiming to be the nation’s interim president. And that’s not an unlikely scenario, said Ramsey.
“The end of 2020 will be an important test for Guaidó’s leadership,” he said. “After he loses any type of legitimate democratic mandates, there’s a real risk the opposition could revert back to its long-standing positions and factionalism, every party going its own direction.”
Presidential Election
But Guaidó’s promise to the country was not to hold onto congress but to hold free and fair presidential elections. And that may be determined by Maduro’s willingness to cut his own term short.
Jesús Seguías, the head of Datincorp, a Venezuelan political analysis firm, said Guaidó’s initial year, trying to seize the presidency by force, even calling for a failed military uprising in April, has only led to a punishing stalemate. As Washington has ramped up targeted sanctions, Venezuelans have suffered. Along with other analysts, Seguías believes that Washington is ready to turn the page and push for simultaneous legislative and presidential elections at the end of this year, perhaps even allowing Maduro to participate.
“One of the justifications for this new strategy is that it’s necessary to break the dynamic of fratricide in Venezuela, where both sides have worn themselves out with unsuccessful attempts to oust the other,” Seguías wrote.
U.S. policymakers haven’t been that explicit. In recent days, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington is open to a “swiftly negotiated transition” with Maduro leading to a transitional government and new elections. But he also insists that the current strategy of using “maximum pressure” to force Maduro to abdicate and call for elections, has not changed.
“I think that the strategy is working fundamentally,” he told reporters Monday, after meeting with Guaidó on the sidelines of a counterterrorism conference in Colombia. “I remember Secretary Baker, former secretary of state of America, reminding me that before the Soviet Union fell, nobody believed that the strategy was working either. And then it worked.”
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For many in the opposition, elections with Maduro still at the helm are a non-starter and would only play into the regime’s hand.
“The [Maduro] government is interested in creating the illusion that we’re in a democratic situation in order to keep control,” said Saul Cabrera, an analyst with Consultores 21, a Caracas-based political analysis firm. “But that’s not what the country or most of the international community want. ... What they are asking for is a competitive election with observers.”
And that can’t happen while Maduro is still in power, he said.
Consultores 21 and others say that 70 to 80 percent of the population desperately wants change. And while Guaidó’s popularity rating has waned since he first rose to prominence, he’s still the nation’s most popular politician.
As he embarks on a second year as the country’s hamstrung and parallel president, the nation will be eagerly watching the young politician, Cabrera said.
“The future of Juan Guaidó and the country are tied together,” he said. “He’s a symbol of our search for democracy.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
