The rise of Maduro’s challenger
New player emerges from the backbench of Venezuela’s hard-knocks political arena
CARACAS: When Venezuelans rang in the new year, few in the crisis-wracked nation had even heard of Juan Guaido.
Two weeks later, the young backbench lawmaker has emerged as a key power broker as he leads the opposition-controlled congress in a high-stakes standoff with socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who is increasingly seen as a dictator both at home and abroad.
“Guaido for president!” people shouted on Friday at the largest street rally in over a year to take on Maduro, eagerly waiting for the fresh-faced 35-year-old to speak. “Out with Maduro!”
As Venezuela’s economic crisis deepens, with masses fleeing the country to escape runaway inflation on pace to surpass 23 million per cent, many are desperate for a new leader to rescue the once-wealthy oil nation from two decades of socialist rule.
Dozens of countries, including the United States, denounced Maduro as illegitimate as he took the oath last Thursday for a second, six-year term.
Into that void stepped Guaido.
An industrial engineer who cut his political teeth in a student protest movement a decade ago, he was elected to the National Assembly in 2015, and in its first session this year was named its leader.
However, the perils of tangling with Maduro are no laughing matter. Shortly after he was elected head of the National Assembly, the rival constitutional assembly controlled by Maduro’s allies threatened Guaido and others with an investigation for treason.
That’s the same charge that landed in jail another up-and-coming opponent, Juan Requenses, following a drone attack on Maduro in August. Requenses has yet to have a public hearing, nor have prosecutors pre- sented any evidence in the case.
Venezuela’s feared SEBIN intelligence police pulled Guaido from his vehicle on Sunday as he headed to a town hall meeting and briefly detained him.
The challenge for Guaido is to find a way to avoid being permanently arrested while keeping together a fractious opposition coalition, some of whose leaders are urging him to invoke an article of the constitution to declare himself interim president in direct defiance of the “illegitimate” Maduro.
Luis Vicente Leon, head of the Caracasbased polling firm Datanalisis, said such a radical approach is popular among the restive grassroots, exiles and their conservative foreign backers.
But it won’t necessarily loosen Maduro’s powerful grip on Venezuela’s institutions, oil wealth and especially the military – the traditional arbiter of political disputes.
“If he decides to do it, part of the opposition will say he’s crazy, and if he doesn’t, part will say he’s a coward,” Leon said.
“Meanwhile, Maduro is waiting on the side to take advantage of the situation.”
The architect of Guaido’s meteoric rise is Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuela’s most popular opposition leader, who is muzzled under house arrest and considered by government opponents to be a political prisoner.
At a time when many had written off the National Assembly, which was stripped of its last bit of power after the government set up the rival constitutional assembly in 2017, Lopez manoeuvred behind the scenes for his Popular Will party to assume the presidency of the gutted legislature.
He then tapped Guaido, serving his first full term as a lawmaker, who rose to the helm of their party in Venezuela after eight more senior politicians sitting on Popular Will’s national board were exiled since 2014.
Guaido has been a loyal acolyte of Lopez for years, standing beside him at a 2014 news conference when the activist announced a strategy of anti-Maduro unrest.
What was called “The Exit” bitterly divided the opposition because it came less than a year into Maduro’s presidency, when support for his rule was still strong.
The two talk a half dozen times each day, and not a single speech or move isn’t coordinated with Lopez first, said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the internal proceedings.
Because Guaido was unknown, Leon said that he hadn’t even measured Guaido’s approval ratings, like he does numerous other politicians. But he plans to start doing so this week.
Guaido has endured hardships for much of his life. At age 15, shortly after Maduro’s mentor, the late Hugo Chavez, assumed the presidency and ushered in a socialist overhaul, Guaido and his family survived a torrential mudslide that killed thousands and left many more homeless in the port city of La Guaira, a short distance from Caracas and home to the capital’s airport.
“We are survivors,” he said.
“If they take Juan Guaido prisoner, someone else will emerge, because our generation won’t give up.”