It’s been more than a month since the Venezuelan ruler, Nicolas Madurostole the July 28 election, and demands from the United States and several Latin American countries that he show proof of his self-proclaimed electoral victory have fallen on deaf ears.
The patience of several democracies in the region to wait for some result from the efforts of the presidents of Brazil and Colombia to convince Ripe to show their voting records and allow a transition to democracy.
As Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino told me in an interview, unless there is a collective international effort to isolate Ripethe Venezuelan dictator will cling to power indefinitely. That could result in a new exodus of millions of Venezuelans, adding to the nearly eight million who have already fled the country since Ripe came to power in 2013.
The Panamanian president told me that the efforts of Brazil and Colombia with Ripe are not going anywhere, and that Brazil’s proposal that Venezuela hold new elections would only help Maduro buy time and give the Venezuelan dictator “a giant oxygen tank.”
Panama, which will assume the presidency of the UN Security Council on January 1, has already broken diplomatic relations with the regime. Ripesuspended air traffic with Venezuela and recognized opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia as the elected president of that country.
According to exit polls and copies of vote counts made public by the Venezuelan opposition, González Urrutia won the election by an overwhelming majority with almost 70% of the vote.
Mulino told me that the time has come for democratic countries to implement a “real material isolation” of Venezuela. When I asked him if other countries should follow Panama’s example and suspend air traffic with the Venezuelahe replied: “I think so.”
There is a big debate in Washington DC about whether the United States should impose broader economic sanctions on Venezuelaor whether that would only accelerate the country’s economic collapse and trigger a new wave of migration.
Venezuelan opposition leaders say that at the very least, U.S. President Joe Biden, Latin America and Spain should impose more personal sanctions, such as visa cancellations, on Venezuelan officials and their cronies in the business world.
Biden has already revoked the visas of many senior Venezuelan officials and their families, but opposition leaders tell me they have given U.S. diplomats a list of 1,560 Venezuelan officials and businesspeople they believe should also be targeted.
Ripe He is in a much weaker position today than he was after the 2018 election. Some of his key leftist allies like Brazil and Colombia have distanced themselves from him, he has lost the support of Chavista sectors in popular neighborhoods and he has less money to pay his security forces after the reinstatement of some US oil sanctions.
Can you count? Ripe with the rank and file soldiers of the Bolivarian National Guard or the army, who earn just $10 a day? asks Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement on August 29 tacitly welcoming some OAS votes, calling for “transparency” and an “impartial review” of the vote in Venezuela.
This is all very well, but it is just talk. It is time for Biden and Latin American countries to adopt collective economic and diplomatic sanctions against Maduro to hasten his downfall, restore democracy and prevent a new mass exodus of Venezuelans.
–Glossed and edited–
© El Nuevo Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
