Venezuela crisis
Broad, regional diplomatic pressure may be the best approach to hold Maduro at bay.
The only thing the opposition can do is continue the street protests that have gone on without end since April, all to no avail. More than 120 people have died in the demonstrations.
If Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro doesn’t qualify quite yet for the title of dictator, he’s pretty close and has been already given that sobriquet by President Donald Trump, who only seems to mince words when he speaks about Russia.
Maduro took another step toward assuring himself dictator status last week when his new “constituent assembly” was sworn in to begin a likely rewrite of the Venezuelan constitution that will give him broad powers.
The U.S., the European Union, a number of Latin American countries and others around the globe have condemned the assembly, and the Vatican last week called for its suspension, all of which Maduro no doubt laughed off because now he basically controls the country.
The assembly, being called a “legislative superbody” by the international press, was his creation and won approval in a national election on Sunday that the opposition made the huge mistake of boycotting because they said it was illegitimate.
They were right about the illegitimacy, but that matters not because, with Maduro having previously packed the Supreme Court with lackeys who do whatever he wants, they have no legal recourse.
The only thing they can do is continue the street protests that have gone on without end since April, all to no avail. More than 120 people have died in the demonstrations.
This new “superbody” is in fact a superbody for Maduro because all 545 representatives are Socialist Party members or sympathizers, meaning we can look forward to a lot of 545-0 votes out of this laughable exercise in democracy.
Maduro tossed the other side a bone on Friday when he sent an opposition leader that his henchmen had thrown in prison a couple of days before back home, where he is under house arrest.
The bogus election and the seizing of the opposition leader prompted Trump’s “dictator” accusation and his threat to take “strong and swift” action against Maduro, possibly including a ban on oil sales between the two countries.
U.S. refiners — Valero, Phillips 66 and Venezuela-owned Citgo among them — import 740,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy oil daily. Venezuela buys about 106,000 barrels a day of refined products and light crude oil from the U.S.
We would urge the Trump administration to hold the oil card in abeyance because of the effects on price and supply even a limited embargo could have and, frankly, with little chance of success. It’s better to explore all other options first.
In fact, an interesting one may be developing in Peru, which has organized a regional meeting of foreign ministers this week to discuss Venezuela.
Our hope is that they will propose a regional push to get Venezuela’s feuding political factions to end their fighting.
We would certainly urge them to try because a similar effort, in which Venezuela played an important part, helped end Colombia’s half-century-long war with leftist rebels last year, a conflict that seemed much more intractable than Venezuela’s.