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On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro plans to defy his own people and the democratic world by inaugurating himself for a third consecutive six-year term after stealing an election last July. A fresh Maduro term would perpetuate a regime responsible for an economic collapse virtually unparalleled in peacetime, and a wave of repression that has jailed an estimated 1,800 political prisoners and triggered an exodus of nearly 8mn refugees abroad, more than from Syria or Ukraine.
The democratic opposition, led by María Corina Machado, has led a courageous and peaceful campaign against Maduro’s fraud, providing evidence via copies of official tally sheets from polling stations to show that opposition candidate Edmundo González won the election by a margin of more than two to one.
González has been living in exile in Spain but has promised to return to Venezuela and defy threats of arrest to claim the presidency on Friday, while Machado has been organising protests from a secret hiding place.
Maduro, despite repeated requests from the international community, has failed to produce any evidence to back up his claimed victory, endorsed by allies such as Russia, China and Iran. In power since 2013, Maduro will rely on the military, the police and the feared, Cuban-backed intelligence services to extend his regime.
The Venezuelan leader’s illegitimate third term presents the incoming Trump administration with one of its first big foreign policy challenges. The Biden administration attempted to negotiate with Maduro but its policy failed because it was based on the naive presumption that the Venezuelan leader would surrender power voluntarily.
Instead, it allowed Maduro to pocket US concessions on oil sanctions while failing to honour his own promises of a clean election. Maduro’s crackdown since the bogus result and his failure to take up Brazil and Colombia’s offer of negotiation suggest he intends to stay in power for as long as the Venezuelan military will let him.
Trump should resist siren voices in the oil and bondholder communities urging him to cut a lucrative deal with Maduro. Instead he should listen to figures such as Marco Rubio, secretary of state-designate, or Mike Waltz, his pick as national security adviser. They have advocated bolstering the democratic opposition and peeling away military support for Maduro by toughening sanctions on Venezuela.
The US should start by cancelling all the sanctions licences granted by the Biden administration to Chevron and other oil companies allowing them to operate in Venezuela. The EU and the UK have an important role too. They should extend sanctions on top Venezuelan officials to mirror the US list, closing loopholes which currently allow some key regime figures the opportunity to enjoy assets and trips in Europe.
Arguments that sanctions will not work are mistaken. Maduro fears sanctions more than any other measure — so much so that his regime passed a law last year mandating 25-year prison sentences, the confiscation of all property and a lifetime political ban on any Venezuelan advocating them. Most of the tough measures in the first Trump administration only took effect in 2019 and were undermined by the European loopholes and the regime’s (correct) calculation that a Biden administration would prove more biddable.
The Venezuelan people have demonstrated via the ballot box a strong desire for deep political change. Now is the moment for the west and democratic Latin America to lend them full-throated support by turning the screws on the illegitimate regime in Caracas.
