Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Even though Hugo Chavez’s successor in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has only narrowly won election, our sources in the region say that the most persuasive scenario for the future of Venezuela is the one outlined by Uruguay’s President Mujica.  In his judgement: “We will witness a process of chavismo without Chavez which will be long-lasting because of its mystique.  [It will become] something similar to Peronism in Argentina.”

In the shorter term, relations with the US are set to be tense under Maduro.  Since before the recent elections, Maduro made it clear that open confrontation with the US was being revived - reversing a rapprochement he had set in motion while foreign minister.  Maduro has invoked a succession of alleged US-staged plots of varying degrees of outrageousness.  The primary motive may have been electoral, but the consequences are likely to be longer lasting, particularly as the new president struggles to burnish his chavista credentials after a much tighter election than he had expected.

Shortly before Chavez died on 5 March, Maduro said in a broadcast to the nation, “There is no doubt that comandante Chavez’s health came under attack by the enemy.  The old enemies of the fatherland [an allusion to the US] sought means of harming his health”.  On 5 March Maduro announced that two air force attachés at the US embassy had been ordered to leave the country within 24 hours, on the grounds that they had been holding meetings with members of the military “to propose destabilising projects”.

On 20 March, Maduro took up a claim made by his foreign minister, Elias Jaua, that two former US diplomats, Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, were hiring mercenaries to kill Henrique Capriles Radonski, the opposition presidential candidate, and to blame the government.  On 7 April he said that the mercenaries were already in the country: “Their objective is to kill me”.

Just before the elections, acting vice-president, Jorge Arreaza, Defence Minister Diego Molero and Interior Minister Néstor Reverol held a press conference to announce that the government had dismantled “a plan that would try to affect the electoral or post-electoral process”. Separately, Reverol produced two audio recordings, handed to the government by “a reliable source” in which two Salvadorean individuals - identified as the retired colonel David Koch and congressman, Roberto d’Aubuisson - discuss plans under way to “disorient the vote”.

On 14 April, after casting his vote, Maduro announced that the following day he would present “direct evidence” of the conspiracy and air the reasons that had led him to expel the two air attachés.  This proof did not materialise, but two days later Maduro said that the US had “financed and directed all of the acts of violence” in Venezuela.