The collapse of the opposition’s flawed interim government, which the U.S. had backed, provides an opportunity for a new approach.
By The Atlantic – William Neuman
Jan 10, 2023
The long-running misadventure of Juan Guaidó’s so-called interim presidency in Venezuela has finally come to an end. Guaidó is the former legislator who declared himself Venezuela’s rightful president in January 2019 in a high-stakes bid to force out the country’s strongman ruler, Nicolás Maduro. But Guaidó was a fictitious president in charge of a fictitious government and, despite the full-throated support of President Donald Trump, his crusade was a chimera—it went nowhere as it lurched from one ill-prepared maneuver to another.
The ordinary Venezuelans who initially came out in thousands in the hopes that Guaidó had hit upon a formula to rid them of the despised Maduro soon lost interest. Their attention and energies returned instead to the task of daily survival in a nation whose economy had collapsed, where widespread electrical blackouts were the norm, and where millions of children went hungry.
Finally, a group of Guaidó’s erstwhile legislative colleagues in the National Assembly, meeting via videoconference in late December, voted to draw the curtain on his parallel government; it officially expired last week.
The development was welcomed by the Biden administration, which is eager to move on from a set of policies inherited from Trump. Those policies have not only failed to turn Venezuela back toward democracy but also exacerbated its catastrophic economic collapse and weakened the political opposition that the U.S. supports. This latest course correction by Maduro’s beleaguered opposition gives the White House a chance to reboot.
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Read More: The Atlantic – A Chance for a Reset on Venezuela
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