To no surprise, President Nicolás Maduro immediately seized upon the new US economic sanctions against Venezuela to play the victim, casting the radical left-wing Bolivarian Revolution as the target of a US-backed international right-wing conspiracy, whose main aim is to invade Venezuela militarily and seize its oil. It is a very tired argument, yet inexhaustible in its utility for Maduro.
President Maduro was quick to warn that were Venezuela to default as a result of the latest sanctions, it would be through no fault of its own, but the result of US actions. This calls to mind the case of Argentina in 2014, when the country wanted to pay its bondholders but could not amid a US court ruling prohibiting payment until the situation of some bondholders who had refused a previous default settlement was settled. This then forced the country into a technical default. Maduro called upon Venezuelan debt holders and US oil clients to meet him to discuss “solutions” to the US measures, thereby casting the US government as the aggressor against the sovereign and its debt holders. Meanwhile, the head of the new government-controlled national constituent assembly (ANC), Delcy Rodríguez, said Venezuela would not sit “with its arms crossed” in response to the US measures and would instead seek to strengthen its multilateral relations with “other poles”, including China, India, Iran, Russia and others.
The ANC subsequently approved a motion calling for the leadership of the main opposition coalition, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), to be put on trial for treason. The ANC’s hard-line vice president, Diosdado Cabello, accused the MUD of backing the ‘economic war’ against Venezuela with its statement welcoming the latest US sanctions on the country. The principal offenders were singled out as the president and vice president of the MUD-controlled national assembly, Julio Borges and Freddy Guevara, accused of “provoking economic aggression and interventions against Venezuela”.
Within hours, the president of the also-government controlled supreme court (TSJ), Maikel Moreno, said that the TSJ would be prepared to hold the trials. Under Article 128 of the Venezuelan penal code, the sentence for treason is 20-30 years in jail. All this rhetoric bolsters the Maduro government’s politically expedient ‘us and them’ narrative, whereby any and all criticism, or any political dissent, forms part of this external conspiracy against the country. Twisting reality, Maduro absolves himself of all responsibility for Venezuela’s severe internal crisis with the argument that the US and its allies are trying to suffocate Venezuela’s economy and deliberately generate a humanitarian emergency, in order to justify a military intervention.
Rodríguez Zapatero back in town
Some in the MUD were very critical of the latest Caracas visit of the lead international mediator in the Venezuelan crisis, Spain’s former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. María Corina Machado of the opposition Vente Venezeula said the Maduro government was “once again” looking to “win time and stability”. She added that it was “obsessed” with getting international recognition for “its fraudulent constituent assembly”. Maduro tweeted a photo of Rodríguez Zapatero at a meeting in the presidential palace with himself, First Lady Cilia Flores, ANC president Delcy Rodríguez, and her brother Jorge Rodríguez, mayor of the central Caracas municipality of Libertador and a senior figure in the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). Likewise, Henrique Capriles Radonski of the opposition Primero Justicia made clear that he would not be meeting with Maduro’s ‘interlocutor’.
Others in the splintered MUD, including the leadership of Acción Democrática (AD), have previously met Rodríguez Zapatero, however, exacerbating the tensions in the coalition. According to local media, this time he met Leopoldo López (under house arrest), national assembly president Julio Borges and Deputy Timoteo Zambrano, of the AD.
- No military intervention
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the two other international mediators for Venezuela, Leonel Fernández and Martín Torrijos, issued a statement rejecting sanctions against Venezuela, as well as any military intervention hypothesis. They called on the international community to contribute ‘to the search for understanding’ in Venezuela.