Desperate people must wait for aid
Opposition leader Juan Guaido has pushed back plans to get badly needed food and medicine into Venezuela by nearly two weeks, a timeline that threatens to deflate the momentum towards unseating entrenched President Nicolas Maduro.
Surrounded yesterday by thousands of cheering supporters, Guaido set February 23 as the date for bringing in the badly needed United States assistance, which has been in warehouses on the Colombian border since last week, but provided few details.
The 11-day wait is sure to be a disappointment for Venezuelans desperate for the supplies. More than 2 million people have fled the country’s soaring hyperinflation, food and medical shortages over the last two years.
‘‘Right now, I’m going to give this order to the armed forces,’’ Guaido told the mass of people gathered in the capital, Caracas. ‘‘Allow in the humanitarian aid. That’s an order.’’
Despite the authoritative-sounding assertion, there has been little evidence that the allegiance of the security forces – the country’s key power broker – has swung behind Guaido, a virtually unknown lawmaker until last month, when he took the helm of the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
Guaido provided few details of how the aid would be brought in from the Colombian border city of Cucuta, except to call for mobilising caravans of Venezuelans – a daring and potentially dangerous manoeuvre that threatens to provoke more violent confrontations with the security forces. At least 40 people have already been killed in clashes since the 35-year-old lawmaker declared himself interim president on January 23.
Jose Manuel Olivares, Guaido’s representative in helping to lead the aid mission from Colombia, acknowledged the risk, saying he and other lawmakers planned to be at the front of the February 23 push to get the aid in, even if it meant risking their lives.
Diego Moya-Ocampos, a Venezuela analyst with London-based consulting firm IHS Global Insight, said Guaido had gained broad support beyond the middle classes and deep into Venezuela’s slums, once a stronghold of Maduro’s socialist party. But this had not translated into support from the military and security forces, he said, who continued to distrust the opposition and feared being held accountable for criminal activity and human rights violations if the regime changed, despite an offer of amnesty by Guaido.
Guaido has won backing from nearly 60 countries, including the US, which has pledged an initial US$20 million in support and has already shipped emergency food and medicine.
Maduro’s backers also gathered yesterday in a square in the capital, cheering and waving flags. They spoke out on state TV against intervention by what they called the ‘‘US empire’’, saying that Maduro was Venezuela’s rightful president.
Maduro says the humanitarian aid is part of a US-led coup to topple him, and he won’t let it across the border. Venezuela’s military last week barricaded a key bridge between Venezuela and Colombia in an apparent attempt to prevent the aid entering. –AP