Guaido calls for emergency governance
CARACAS: Venezuela should form an emergency government made up of the opposition and some members of the ruling Socialist Party to receive foreign aid needed to confront the coronavirus outbreak, opposition leader Juan Guaido said in an interview on Sunday.
President Nicolas Maduro has been broadly discredited among Western nations after his disputed 2018 reelection, leaving few foreign financiers willing to provide funds to improve a health care system decimated by years of economic crisis.
Mr Guaido, who has been recognised by more than 50 nations as the country’s rightful president, said a coalition government would be able to convince multilateral agencies to provide US$1.2 billion (39.2 billion baht) in financing to address the outbreak.
“It’s crucial that we attend to the country’s health emergency, to increase the number of hospital beds and ventilators, to provide (water) for hospitals,” Mr Guaido said in a video interview, referencing the lack of running water in many public medical facilities.
“We have an existing humanitarian emergency in Venezuela, which will worsen the pandemic.”
The emergency government would not include Mr Maduro or other top allies, he said, a group of whom were indicted by the US Department of Justice on Thursday on accusations of narco-terrorism. He declined to reveal the names of potential participants.
Mr Maduro has dismissed Mr Guaido as a puppet of the United States and in the past has rebuffed calls to step aside. He denies charges of involvement in the drug trade.
Venezuela’s information ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Mr Guaido’s proposal.
Mr Guaido in 2019 called on the country’s military to rise up against Mr
Maduro to end the country’s economic crisis and create a transition government, but the military’s top brass stuck with Maduro despite the country’s economic crisis.
Humanitarian organisations have for years been saying that Venezuela is suffering widespread hunger due to an economic collapse that has fueled the migration of nearly 5 million people since 2015.
Mr Maduro last year blocked Mr Guaido’s allies from bringing US-backed humanitarian aid into the country via neighbouring Colombia, describing the effort as a veiled invasion.