Inefficiency has driven the state-run oil company to reduce oil production by more than 1.2 million barrels per day, forcing the government to import gasoline to satisfy domestic demand, offering bleak prospects for any economic recovery this year. Maduro's mistake appointing a corrupt general from the National Guard as president of the Venezuelan Oil Industry (PDVSA) will destroy the industry and force to a national oil strike.
Venezuela ended 2017 in default, while the United States and Europe levelled sanctions on Venezuelan bonds and government officials, demonstrating widespread global concern about the political and humanitarian crisis. In the midst of political and economic turmoil, illegal groups and corrupt officials co-opted the Venezuelan banking system and oil industry as vehicles for drug trafficking, and mafia and money laundering operations, with reach far beyond Venezuelan borders. By some estimates, corrupt Venezuelan officials and their front-men throughout the region have laundered some $700 billion. In response to corruption, political prisoners and human rights violations, the EU, Canada, and U.S. have announced further sanctions.
Moreover, violent political demonstrations battered Venezuela in 2017, resulting in more than 120 deaths and thousands arrests of demonstrators and opposition leaders. More than 240 people remain in prison in the wake of the demonstrations. For much of last year, the Maduro regime successfully mollified unrest in some of the country’s poorest regions with false promises of improved social programs. However rising tensions by the year’s end augur a less tractable public and heightened violent resistance. For instance, the December 31 killing by a National Guardsman of a poor pregnant woman protesting in a long line for food, sparked unprecedented outrage in one of Caracas’ poorest neighborhoods.
The coming weeks will bring and exponential rise in sporadic demonstrations, mob violence, riots, and looting in poor neighborhoods and we can expect localized violence to spread quickly to the national level. The regime will respond with more arbitrary detentions of people demanding access to basic necessities, which will nourish a new wave of massive and violent demonstrations.
An estimated 2.5 million people have emigrated from Venezuela over the past five years, most of them middle class professionals. This year, increased desperation will drive even the poorest Venezuelans to seek relief outside of Venezuela. Migrants will flood borders with Brazil, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago, generating a humanitarian migratory crisis for which the region is poorly prepared.
After 17 years, the Chavez Revolution has brought Venezuela violence, inefficiency, poverty, and gross abuses of power, which become ever more challenging to address.
In the other side, the “formal” opposition, represented by the Mesa de Unidad Democratica (MUD), is an electoral platform rather than an opposition movement that represents a collection of relatively weak political parties. It lacks key representation from labor unions, civil society, the private sector, and other important political movements that oppose the Maduro regime. It has been effective winning some elections, like the parliamentarian election in 2015, but has failed to design and implement implementing an effective opposition strategy to combat the dictatorial regime. Moreover, some MUD members have colluded corruption inside the regime, further damaging the platform’s credibility and cohesion. So far, the MUD’s only strategy has been to engage in a series ineffective “dialogues,” while the regime has continued to tighten its grip on power. In 2018, the MUD will champion a presidential election as the only viable alternative and will put forth a single opposition candidate. Yet, the Maduro regime has proven itself adroit at manipulating the opposition with small electoral concessions, while maintaining control of the process. Without a more coherent, credible, and inclusive opposition party a presidential election will become a “Chronicle of A Death Foretold”.
Venezuela ended 2017 in default, while the United States and Europe levelled sanctions on Venezuelan bonds and government officials, demonstrating widespread global concern about the political and humanitarian crisis. In the midst of political and economic turmoil, illegal groups and corrupt officials co-opted the Venezuelan banking system and oil industry as vehicles for drug trafficking, and mafia and money laundering operations, with reach far beyond Venezuelan borders. By some estimates, corrupt Venezuelan officials and their front-men throughout the region have laundered some $700 billion. In response to corruption, political prisoners and human rights violations, the EU, Canada, and U.S. have announced further sanctions.
Moreover, violent political demonstrations battered Venezuela in 2017, resulting in more than 120 deaths and thousands arrests of demonstrators and opposition leaders. More than 240 people remain in prison in the wake of the demonstrations. For much of last year, the Maduro regime successfully mollified unrest in some of the country’s poorest regions with false promises of improved social programs. However rising tensions by the year’s end augur a less tractable public and heightened violent resistance. For instance, the December 31 killing by a National Guardsman of a poor pregnant woman protesting in a long line for food, sparked unprecedented outrage in one of Caracas’ poorest neighborhoods.
The coming weeks will bring and exponential rise in sporadic demonstrations, mob violence, riots, and looting in poor neighborhoods and we can expect localized violence to spread quickly to the national level. The regime will respond with more arbitrary detentions of people demanding access to basic necessities, which will nourish a new wave of massive and violent demonstrations.
An estimated 2.5 million people have emigrated from Venezuela over the past five years, most of them middle class professionals. This year, increased desperation will drive even the poorest Venezuelans to seek relief outside of Venezuela. Migrants will flood borders with Brazil, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago, generating a humanitarian migratory crisis for which the region is poorly prepared.
After 17 years, the Chavez Revolution has brought Venezuela violence, inefficiency, poverty, and gross abuses of power, which become ever more challenging to address.
In the other side, the “formal” opposition, represented by the Mesa de Unidad Democratica (MUD), is an electoral platform rather than an opposition movement that represents a collection of relatively weak political parties. It lacks key representation from labor unions, civil society, the private sector, and other important political movements that oppose the Maduro regime. It has been effective winning some elections, like the parliamentarian election in 2015, but has failed to design and implement implementing an effective opposition strategy to combat the dictatorial regime. Moreover, some MUD members have colluded corruption inside the regime, further damaging the platform’s credibility and cohesion. So far, the MUD’s only strategy has been to engage in a series ineffective “dialogues,” while the regime has continued to tighten its grip on power. In 2018, the MUD will champion a presidential election as the only viable alternative and will put forth a single opposition candidate. Yet, the Maduro regime has proven itself adroit at manipulating the opposition with small electoral concessions, while maintaining control of the process. Without a more coherent, credible, and inclusive opposition party a presidential election will become a “Chronicle of A Death Foretold”.
We are talking of a “Catch 22” situation with a country with a drug-cartel in control and an opposition too week and divided to fight alone with the scare democratic tools remaining.
What to do with respect to Venezuela:
• Individual sanctions have been proven effective against Maduro’s regime and its allies. More sanctions from more countries will continue to build pressure on the regime and its corrupt and criminal affiliates. A no-fly restriction for Maduro and his officials would further increase pressure.
• The international community should press for a formal criminal case against Maduro, his ministers, and his generals for their active participation in drug trafficking in a federal U.S. court.
• A state party to the Rome Statute should bring the Venezuelan government’s systematic crimes against the humanity to the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor for immediate investigation. Together with increased sanctions, targeted criminal cases could force the regime to a true negotiation.
• The Venezuelan opposition needs to find a common ground among a depleted MUD, other internal opposition movements, student groups, labor unions, and the diaspora. The international community has important role to play in supporting a coherent opposition movement that goes beyond an electoral platform.
• The international community should prioritize forcing a negotiation that will mitigate the humanitarian crisis over pushing for an electoral transition.
• The international community should develop strategies to prosecute corrupt Venezuelan officials, their business partners, and front men, and recover the billions of laundered dollars. Recovered money should be placed in a special fund for the reconstruction of Venezuela. The international community should also develop a reconstruction and humanitarian plan to fill the vacuum when the regime falls.
• The international community should prioritize person-to-person humanitarian support, including a more active role for the Venezuelan diaspora. Broader humanitarian efforts can be easily manipulated by the Maduro regime.
• UNHCR and the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Trinidad, as well as other neighboring countries must prepare for Venezuelan refugee crisis and develop a Venezuelan Refugee Assistant Project.
• The US Southern Command should coordinate with security forces in neighboring countries, as armed illegal groups, cartels, and guerrillas gain strength raise the specter of increased transnational crime.
• The U.S. must improve negotiations with the Maduro regime’s last remaining global partners—China and Russia, to draw them into a common effort to end the dictatorship.
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