Venezuelan Opposition votes to dissolve the parallel government

Here’s a name we haven’t seen popping up in the news for a while now. Juan Guaido is the “interim president” Venezuela in the three years preceding the controversial reelection by Nicolas Maduro. Guaido was recognized by most western countries, including the United States. Maduro didn’t seem to let this bother him. He’s maintained control of the military and nearly all other domestic agencies and activities. But this week, Guaido’s own opposition party voted to remove him and dissolve his unofficial, parallel government, replacing it with a special commission tasked with controlling the country’s overseas assets. (Reuters)

Venezuela’s opposition national assembly voted on Friday to remove interim President Juan Guaido, dissolve his government and appoint a commission to govern the country’s foreign assets, as lawmakers seek a united front ahead of elections slated for 2024.

Guaido has been the public face of Venezuela’s fractious opposition since 2019, when he invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency, garnering backing from the United States and other governments who reject the 2018 re-election of President Nicolas Maduro as fraudulent.

But Maduro has remained in control of nearly all Venezuela’s institutions, including its security forces, and Guaido’s interim government, which has control over some foreign assets and runs many embassies, has seen its support wane.

After the 2018 elections, many of Guaido’s supporters both at home and abroad were hopeful that declaring the Maduro presidency to be over and gaining the recognition of world leaders would eventually force a change and see the tyrant removed from office. The entire process has become a complete embarrassment.

Guaido never wielded any true power and actually wound up being imprisoned a few times by Maduro’s thugs. Other countries “officially” He was recognized as the president. Yesterday, a spokesperson for U.S. National Security Council stated that America would continue its support of the interim government.

That’s our position on paper, anyway, but the reality has been quite different. Through back channels, the Biden administration has been directly negotiating with Nicolas Maduro on matters ranging anywhere from oil sales to the release several CITGO executives who were imprisoned this year. We may not be calling Maduro the president, but we’ve certainly treated him like one.

As I stated, the entire “Guaido presidency” This has been nothing but a joke. The opposition party says they are removing Guaido from his shadow government to protect the people. “unity” The 2024 elections are just a few months away. It is not clear why they think these elections will end differently. No matter how the vote turns out, Maduro will almost certainly just declare himself to be the winner again and continue doing what he’s been doing all along. Of course, much of South America is once again falling into chaos these days, so Venezuela probably isn’t that much of an outlier in that regard.

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