Maduro orders multiple arrests within military to quash dissent
The Nicolas Maduro regime has launched a crackdown within the Venezuelan armed forces in recent days, arresting nearly a dozen officers and ordering the secret police to monitor anyone in contact with deserters and discharged military personnel, according to sources with close ties to the military.
Among the officers arrested are members of the Casa Militar, the unit based in the Miraflores presidential palace in charge of Maduro’s safekeeping.
“There’s a number of lieutenants detained who were already brought before a military tribunal,” said retired general Antonio Rivero, who stays in contact with active-duty officers from his home in Miami. “That group is made up of about 20 people arrested.”
Most are low-ranking officers but they include a lieutenant colonel and a number of non-commissioned officers, Rivero said.
About 27 National Guard members were arrested in January after rebelling and posting videos on social media expressing their dissatisfaction with the hunger and economic difficulties that Venezuelan society is suffering under Maduro.
The new arrests also come amid a series of declarations issued by retired and active-duty officers, in Venezuela and abroad, rejecting Maduro’s presidency as illegitimate.
Armed forces members have enjoyed privileges granted to them by the late president Hugo Chavez since 1998, but are now evaluating their next steps as the world turns against Maduro, said Esteban Gerbasi, a Miami expert on Venezuelan security issues.
“The senior commanders don’t want to leave because they live well. But they are also starting to realize that Maduro has no way to maintain his totalitarian regime” because of the international economic sanctions imposed on the government, Gerbasi said.
“He has no money, not even gasoline for transportation. But most importantly, he seems to have no Plan B for a political solution to the crisis. Maduro is on a collision course,” Gerbasi said. “With no way out for his people, what he’s proposing is: ‘You either commit suicide with me or you commit suicide with me.’ And societies don’t commit suicide.”
The regime, in fact, appears to fear that its armed forces lack the commitment to go down with Maduro as internal and international pressure rises, and it’s starting to feel that its soldiers could turn against them, experts said.
Meanwhile, some major Canadian unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Canadian Labour Congress, have criticized the Trudeau government for backing opposition leader Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuela’s legislature, as the legitimate interim leader of the country.
In a statement, CUPE supported the Maduro government and called the federal Liberals’ support of the opposition akin to aligning Canada with an American plan to engineer “a coup d’état.”
The Canadian Labour Congress said it is “alarmed at the escalation of international interference in the democratic process of a sovereign nation, including the possibility of military intervention.”
Canada and Latin American allies in the Lima Group, along with the United States, have been pushing Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, to step down. On Monday European countries including Spain, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Lithuania added their voices calling for free and fair elections as soon as possible.