Here’s a name we haven’t seen popping up in the news for a while now. Juan Guaido has been the “interim president” of Venezuela for the past three years since the widely disputed reelection of Nicolas Maduro. Most western nations including the United States recognized Guaido as the Venezuelan president. But Maduro never seemed to let that bother him or slow him down. He’s maintained control of the military and nearly all other domestic agencies and activities. But this week, Guaido’s own opposition party voted to remove him and dissolve his unofficial, parallel government, replacing it with a special commission tasked with controlling the country’s overseas assets. (Reuters)
Venezuela’s opposition national assembly voted on Friday to remove interim President Juan Guaido, dissolve his government and appoint a commission to govern the country’s foreign assets, as lawmakers seek a united front ahead of elections slated for 2024.
Guaido has been the public face of Venezuela’s fractious opposition since 2019, when he invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency, garnering backing from the United States and other governments who reject the 2018 re-election of President Nicolas Maduro as fraudulent.
But Maduro has remained in control of nearly all Venezuela’s institutions, including its security forces, and Guaido’s interim government, which has control over some foreign assets and runs many embassies, has seen its support wane.
After the 2018 elections, many of Guaido’s supporters both at home and abroad were hopeful that declaring the Maduro presidency to be over and gaining the recognition of world leaders would eventually force a change and see the tyrant removed from office. Since that time, however, the entire effort has turned into something of an embarrassment.
Guaido never wielded any true power and actually wound up being imprisoned a few times by Maduro’s thugs. Other nations “officially” recognized him as the president and a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council said yesterday that America would continue to recognize and support the interim government.
That’s our position on paper, anyway, but the reality has been quite different. The Biden administration has been negotiating directly with Nicolas Maduro through back channels on matters ranging from oil sales to the release of several imprisoned CITGO executives this year. We may not be calling Maduro the president, but we’ve certainly treated him like one.
As I said, the entire “Guaido presidency” has simply been a joke. The opposition party claims that they are removing Guaido and his shadow government in the interest of “unity” ahead of the 2024 elections. Why they expect those elections to end any differently is a mystery. No matter how the vote turns out, Maduro will almost certainly just declare himself to be the winner again and continue doing what he’s been doing all along. Of course, much of South America is once again falling into chaos these days, so Venezuela probably isn’t that much of an outlier in that regard.
