US warns Maduro his ‘days are numbered’
The United States has warned Nicolás Maduro that his “days are numbered”, before an international meeting in Bogotá today with his rival, Juan Guaidó, to decide the next steps in the battle for Venezuela after violent protests wracked the South American nation. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said he was confident Mr Maduro would soon be gone. Running battles resulted in 285 people being injured while trying to deliver humanitarian aid at the weekend.
‘Picking exact days is difficult... I’m confident that the Venezuelan people will ensure that Maduro’s days are numbered’
‘I wanted to help Venezuela. I love my country. And I love Colombia for giving us refuge from what is happening there’
THE United States has warned Nicolás Maduro that his “days are numbered”, before an international meeting in Bogotá today with his rival, Juan Guaidó, to decide the next steps in the battle for Venezuela.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, who will travel to Bogotá alongside Mike Pence, the vice-president, condemned the violence and said he was confident Mr Maduro, the embattled president, would soon be gone.
“Predictions are difficult. Picking exact days is difficult,” he said, speaking on a US political chat show the day after violent protests wracked the South American nation.
“I’m confident that the Venezuelan people will ensure that Maduro’s days are numbered.”
The violence looked set to get worse, however, after Iris Varela, Venezuela’s prisons minister, announced that she was bringing “trained” inmates from overcrowded and highly dangerous prisons to the border, to “have the privilege of fighting for the fatherland”.
“I’m bringing them here, and I will continue to bring them here, in signifi- cant numbers,” she said, speaking in the border city of San Antonio.
Mr Maduro, who is clinging to power with the support of Cuba, Russia and China, spent Saturday dancing on national television at a rally in Caracas.
State television did not show the bloody scenes at the borders, where on Saturday two people were killed in a town bordering Brazil and two died on the Colombian border.
Running battles on bridges from Colombia into Venezuela resulted in 285 people being injured on the Colombian side while trying to get humanitarian aid into the country.
Some of the aid was burned on the bridges, with a witness telling The Daily Telegraph that Mr Maduro’s troops poured fuel on to the convoy.
Renewed clashes broke out around the Cúcuta crossings and the Brazilian border city of Pacaraima yesterday, with Venezuelan forces again firing teargas and live ammunition.
Colombian migration officials confirmed that 100 officers had downed arms and declared their support for Mr Guaidó, who last month declared himself the legitimate “interim president”.
Mr Guaidó had planned for an “avalanche of aid” to flow into Venezuela on Saturday after coordinating the delivery of hundreds of tons of supplies with the US, Europe and Latin American nations. On Friday, a fundraising concert organised by Sir Richard Branson energised tens of thousands of Venezuelans to the cause.
But yesterday, Mr Maduro mocked the efforts as a Washington plot.
“They tried to disguise, with a concert and a supposed delivery of ‘humanitarian aid’ at the border, a plan which had been developed and announced by Donald Trump,” he said.
“The people are on the streets, mobilised and alert in every corner of the country. I call on all men and women of good faith to not let their guard down and keep on the front foot of the fight to preserve the peace in Venezuela.”
According to a Reuters witness, two aid trucks crossed the Brazilian border but did not pass through a Venezuelan checkpoint. A Puerto Rican ship carrying humanitarian aid was ordered to turn back after a Venezuelan navy ship threatened to open fire on the vessel.
“This is unacceptable and shameful,” said Ricardo Rosselló, the governor of Puerto Rico. “We have also notified our partners in the US government about this serious incident.”
Mr Guaidó’s side was left licking their wounds and planning their next steps. Meanwhile, Freddy Superlano, the 42-year-old opposition politician who is one of Mr Guaidó’s closest confidants, was recovering from being drugged on Saturday morning. Carlos Salinas, his adviser and cousin, died in the incident.
Initial reports suggested he had been poisoned in a restaurant, causing immense alarm. Local media now claim he was drugged and robbed by prostitutes in a Cúcuta motel.
In Cúcuta’s hospitals, the walking wounded were vowing to continue the fight. Evaristo Jose Guerrero, a 27-yearold farmer, broke down in tears as he recounted how he was shot in the eye on the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge – one of four crossings where volunteers tried to bring in aid.
“I wanted to help Venezuela,” he sobbed. “I love my country. And I love Colombia for giving us refuge from what is happening there.”
In the bed next to him, Carlos Garillo Cordoba, a 26-year-old chef from Caracas, told how he was unloading the aid cargo from the lorries, having just edged onto the Venezuelan side of the bridge, when the troops opened fire. “We had the boxes in our hands, and the truck went up in flames,” he said. On the Venezuelan side of the bridge, gangs of pro-maduro thugs on motorbikes had fired at the protesters.
“They started shooting at close range as if we were criminals,” Vladimir Gomez, a 27-year-old shopkeeper, told Reuters, wearing a bloodstained shirt.
Dr Monica Flores, from the Venezuelan city of San Cristóbal, was manning a makeshift triage centre on the Colombian side. By 5pm on Saturday, her team of 14 doctors had treated 60 patients, she said. Most were young men with lead pellet wounds.
However, Dr Flores and Dr Andres Calle, her colleague, were both exasperated by the lack of support from Mr Guaidó’s team, which meant they were without supplies and had to treat victims by the light of a car’s headlights.
“The politicians came and shook our hands, and said thanks, then went away,” said Dr Calle. “How can this be allowed to happen?”
The violence on the Venezuelan border, disrupting efforts to bring aid into the country, marks a new low for the Left-wing government of President Nicolas Maduro. He regards the humanitarian assistance as a “Trojan horse” intended to destabilise his regime still further.
Certainly it is being organised, with US backing, by his opponent Juan Guaido. But the aid is also essential in order to relieve the privations of the people of Venezuela. By ordering his troops to stop food and medicine being delivered to his country’s citizens, Mr Maduro is making the opposition’s case against his continuation in office more forcefully than they ever could. Volunteers have been attacked, aid deliveries set alight and people trying to cross into Colombia for work have been forced back by tear gas.
So far, Mr Maduro has managed to cling to power because the army and police have remained loyal. But as members of the security forces recoil from his latest excesses, his grip seems to be weakening. Reports of desertions by some troops at the border are straws in the wind for the regime.
The president’s increasingly hysterical denunciation of America suggests that he knows his days are numbered. It is not only Washington which wants him out – the governments of most Latin American and Western countries are demanding fresh elections and have recognised Mr Guaido as the nation’s leader. But the people who matter most are the long-suffering Venezuelan majority who have seen a once-prosperous country brought to its knees by the lunacies of socialism. As we have seen in the past, when such regimes fail they always blame their own people and malign outside forces for their own shortcomings.