Juan Guaidó, in his office in Caracas, on December 30th. LEO ALVAREZ (AFP)
Two oligarchies are fighting in impoverished Venezuela today, both tyrannical and militaristic.
The convention attributes democratizing ideals and goals to the opposition coalition. Many of its members consider themselves liberal Democrats, supporters of the market economy, and of republican and civilian regimes. Also from the separation of powers, the change of power and the accounting of the popular election positions.
To question his goodwill is to ignore the human rights abuses to which his leaders, activists and supporters have been victims, even fatalities, for many years.
Paradoxically, however, political opposition groups as a whole have already ceased to be democratic in their deliberations and methods. The word “democracy” in his speech is at least an excuse. In essence, the Venezuelan opposition has offered its compatriots a program that roughly restores everything bad that could have preceded Chávez. Their anachronistic and crushing militarism deserves a little explanation.
Since the beginning of this century, the political parties of the last century have already been swept off the map by the overwhelming incursion of Chavismo, the barons of the press, the “environmental analysts”, the consultative research laboratories of industry and banking, last but not least the super managers of the state oil company dissatisfied and alarmed ahead.
They did so with astonishing contempt for Venezuela’s contemporary history and for all that politics requires of Ars, skill, patience and left hand.
A standout moment in their performance was the strike, in which an establishment of 21st-century oil supermanagers with zombie ideas about politics, operating nine to five with Blackberries and PowerPoints, attempted to overthrow a 19th-century military charisma bring about zombie ideas about the economy.
It was preceded by a failed military coup whose master plan followed the old, simplistic pattern of John Foster Dulles in the 1950s: to create a “climate” of civil unrest that could pass as a legitimate general uprising and provoke barracks intervention.
Trying to save themselves the hassle—the hassle—of building a long-term civilian and voting alternative, they only managed to hand over military command and the state oil company to Chávez and Fidel Castro in just eight months.
The amazing thing is that fifteen years later, Leopoldo López, golden boy of a distinguished Harvard fraternity, has not produced a better strategy, only a freeze-drying of the Foster-Dulles method. It became clear that John Bolton cannot match Foster Dulles’ points and that Venezuela is not Guatemala 1954.
Less than 100 days after launching their campaign for a return to the democratic norm, we learned that López and Guaidó were secretly courting the tutelage of the military cacocracy and supreme court struggle of the Madurista dictatorship. The April 30 botch, its precursors and sequels, sank the USS Guaidó.
Two generations of politicians born between the 50s and 90s sank with his crew, the founders of Primero Justicia and above all the “operators” of the so-called “Generation of 2007” co-opted by Primero Justicia and its departments. Some of them were appointed to colonize the subsidiaries of the State Oil Company (PDVSA) as political commissars during Guaidó’s ill-fated interim. His most important appearance was the bankruptcy of Monomeros, the largest fertilizer factory in Colombia, thanks to a looting of a clientele.
The opposition leadership has become an oligarchy – a “government of the few”, in this case with an alarming lack of representation, embodied in the National Assembly – which, thanks to Guaidó, has received temporary subsidies from Washington. For three years, this money maintained the illusion of a government-in-exile ready to replace that of Maduro, General Padrino and the Rodríguez brothers.
In order to ruthlessly renounce Guaidó, the National Assembly elected seven years ago, in addition to managing the country’s assets, wanted to invest abroad: no less than the Citgo Oil Corp and the nation’s gold deposited in London, which thanks to the outraged reaction of opposition civil society, the denounced the unconstitutionality of the outrageous arbitration process, they are safe from an outbreak similar to that of Monomeros for the time being.
It goes without saying that in the pre-Chávez era, another parliamentary oligarchy, equally engulfed by electoral passion, conspired to remove Carlos Andrés Pérez at a rate comparable to that reported by Guaidó, than just yet months were left until the end of his term. .
Guaidó, who was Leopoldo López’s deputy, has the consolation of running for the opposition primary, which is trying to choose a candidate opposed to Maduro. She would be a gallant temptation at the height of her proven and courageous commitment to politics. Besides, no one will accuse him of marching into exile.
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