World News - The Venezuelan Crisis
- liloudinca
- 19 ago 2019
- Tempo di lettura: 3 min
In 2013, the former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died, and Nicolas Maduro succeeded him. Maduro, who was at the time vice president, was democratically elected with 50.62% of the votes as the representative of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. However, during those years, Venezuela was starting to slide into an economic crisis caused by Chavez’s heavily socialist measures.
Already in 2014, Maduro’s supporters, seeing that the new leader was unable to cope with the country’s difficulties, were unsatisfied with the worsening living standards and the repression of dissent. Besides aggravating the population’s situation, the president exploited his position for his interests and power: he illegally filled the courts with the judges he selected, he refuted the parliament to replace it with a new one, and he rewrote the constitution.
Maduro’s management of oil resources also made the population doubt of his abilities. Venezuela is the world’s most oil-rich country as it can extract 3,000,000 barrels of oils per day. In 2018, only 1,000,000 barrels could be extracted due to the state’s poor resources, and half of this amount was being used to pay the country’s debt. More than 90% of Venezuela’s economy relies on the sale of oil, hence the massive reduction in extraction has led to greater poverty. It is estimated that over 80% of Venezuelan citizens live below the poverty line, having scarce access to food and services.
On May 20, 2018, Maduro was re-elected for another six-year term, having obtained two-thirds of the votes. However, the electoral process is very questionable, not only because of the lowest voter turnout in the country’s history but also because of various procedural irregularities. Among other issues, few political parties were given the chance to participate in the elections or their representatives had been jailed, the National Electoral Council was biased, and vote-buying was reported. For these reasons, the European Union, the Lima Group, the Organization of American States, and other countries decided to reject the dubious elections.
Maduro’s illegal actions surfaced in January 2019, when he began his second electoral term. Juan Guaidó, 35, is the leader of the National Assembly and of the opposition against Maduro. As the constitution states that, in case of an unfair election, the head of the National Assembly should become president, Guaidó proclaimed himself president on January 23, 2019. Numerous countries recognized him as president, including the US, Canada, and most of Western Europe. Guaidó has organized various protests to denounce Maduro’s “dictatorship” and call for the military to move to his side.
Maduro refuses to surrender and relies on his allies Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Cuba to continue leading Venezuela. The map below shows the international support towards Maduro in contrast with the opposition. Countries in blue recognize Guaidó, those in light blue support the National Assembly (Guaidó’s party), and those in red are in favour of Maduro:
Protests and conflict between the two sides have been going on for more than six months now but no agreement has been found yet. However, the challenge for Venezuelans is not just political and economic but also humanitarian. According to the Human Rights Watch, there are “poor prison conditions, impunity for human rights violations, and harassment by government officials of human rights defenders”. More than 3 million Venezuelans (almost 10% of the population) have fled the country and urgently require humanitarian assistance. Some have obtained the refugee status, while others are still considered illegal immigrants and could be subject to exploitation and abuse. Many individuals have also left the state for fear of being imprisoned: the government has jailed more than 230 political opponents and forced others to exile. During protests, security force personnel also beat, tortured, abused, and shot demonstrators, and over 12500 people have been arrested for their marches and are now persecuted legally.
In addition to human rights violations, political discrimination, and the lack of freedom of expression, 80% of households are insecure, and cases of maternal mortality, infant mortality, and malaria increased exponentially in 2017. The combination of all these circumstances caused a wave of Venezuelan migrants in 2018. 1,000,000 people went to Colombia, 500,000 to Peru, and 290,224 fled to the United States, as can be seen on the map below.
It is clear that the situation in Venezuela cannot continue like this as it is destroying the country and its people. Maduro has proven he is unable to lead the country efficiently in order to save it from an economic crisis and improve the population’s living conditions. Is leaving space to Guaidò the best solution for Venezuela? This question is very debatable, but what is certain is that Maduro is not acting in his state’s best interests and there needs to be a radical change very soon.
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