Power a family affair as Maduro promotes his wife and son
In a sign of his growing confidence that the US and its allies have failed in their attempts to oust him from office, President Nicolas Maduro has begun putting his family into positions of power.
In an election which the main Venezuelan opposition boycotted on the grounds it was rigged, the ruling Socialist party gained more than 91 per cent of the 277 seats. Other polls put support for the regime at less than 20 per cent.
Among the successful candidates were Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and his son, Nicolas Maduro Guerra, 30. Both will take up their positions in the new National Assembly in January.
The younger Maduro is usually referred to as Nicolasito, or ‘‘little Nicholas’’, and is a flautist who worked for the national film school. He has said that his candidacy was ‘‘God’s plan’’ and his interest in politics came from being close to his father and ‘‘watching him in action’’.
He denies he is being groomed as the heir to a political dynasty in the same way as the Kims in North Korea or the Lukashenkos in Belarus. ‘‘Sometimes people will say that,’’ he told the Associated Press. ‘‘I don’t have any aspirations. My aspiration is to serve.’’
As in many of his father’s inner circle, the Trump administration has imposed sanctions against the younger Maduro, meaning that any US assets he may have are frozen, and he is banned from travelling to America.
Last year Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, accused him of profiting from his father’s corruption at the cost of millions for poor Venezuelans. Maduro has insisted that the allegations are unfounded and says he lives a modest life, despite being photographed in 2015 being showered with dollar bills in a luxury hotel in Caracas.
Under US sanctions, Venezuela’s economy has collapsed, leading to a steep rise in poverty and the emigration of more than five million Venezuelans, more than 15 per cent of the population. About US$300 billion (NZ$423B) of Venezuela’s oil revenue from 2006-16 is unaccounted for, assumed lost to corruption, according to the government’s own figures.
Maduro’s wife, Flores, 64, is Nicolas Maduro’s stepmother. She is a lawyer whose rise to influence began in 1994 when she secured the release from prison of Hugo Chavez, who was then a lieutenant colonel in the army. He had been jailed for leading an attempted coup against the rightwing government two years previously.
Her loyalty was rewarded by Chavez after he was elected president and she became head of the National Assembly from 2006-11. During that period she was accused of nepotism, with local media reporting that 16 of her relatives held government positions thanks to her help. She dismissed the reports as the work of mercenary journalists.
In 2016 two of her nephews were found guilty in a New York court of trying to ship drugs into the United States, allegedly to raise money for the family’s political ambitions. Both are serving prison sentences in the US.