The uprising: ‘They are taking a huge leap today’

Shannon O’Neil, a Venezuela expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, described the uprising as a high-risk move.

“If [Juan] Guaido´ and [Leopoldo] Lo´ pez fail to split the military and rally top brass to their cause, then a big question is what happens to them personally and to the opposition cause more broadly. They could end up tonight in jail or worse. They are taking a huge leap today.”

Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of the New York-based Americas Society and Council of the Americas, called Guaido´ ’s action a “bold, dramatic effort to force the issue, recapture initiative and require the Maduro regime to act.”

He said the fact that Lo´ pez was at large could be a big challenge for the Venezuelan Government.

“The regime is afraid of Lo´ pez, which is why they have kept him under arrest,” Farnsworth said. “He is Guaido´ ’s patron and would be a key figure in a free Venezuela. “Springing him from arrest and engaging directly with the military will present the regime with a real dilemma: Let him remain free in defiance of the regime to rally popular support, or attempt to jail him again, which the people may very well resist.”

Geoff Ramsey, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group, told the New York Times: “I think ultimately what we’re going to see coming out of this is both the government and the opposition recognizing that their hands were not as strong as they thought they were”.