Maduro ignites political offensive, talks break down

Venezuela's US-backed opposition is scrambling to maintain its institutional foothold in the National Assembly in the face of government threats to neutralize it or force early elections.

The protracted political conflict in the Opec country appears to be entering a more ominous stage. Already the target of escalating US sanctions, Venezuela would be left with no internationally recognized democratic institutions should the assembly fall into government hands.

The elected legislature has been controlled by the opposition since January 2016. The current head of the assembly is Juan Guaido, who is recognized as Venezuela's interim president by dozens of western countries, in place of President Nicolas Maduro.

All other institutions, including the supreme court, the armed forces, the central bank, the national electoral council (CNE) and the national constituent assembly (ANC), are controlled by the Maduro government.

The government's internal maneuvering follows another tightening of US sanctions and the effective collapse of Norwegian-sponsored negotiations between the government and opposition in Barbados.

Maduro said at a government rally in Caracas on 10 August that a US "embargo" imposed on 5 August forced him to withdraw his delegates from 8-9 August talks in Barbados with Guaido's representatives.

Days earlier, Maduro ordered ANC president Diosdado Cabello and the supreme court to charge Guaido and opposition lawmakers with treason. With hundreds of political opponents already behind bars or in exile, the threat is not considered hollow.

"As far as President Maduro is concerned the dialogue in Barbados is finished," a presidential palace official tells Argus. "The US government and its puppet Guaido are responsible for its failure."

In recent weeks, Guaido has come under growing pressure from other opposition factions that rejected the talks from the beginning. Maria Corina Machado, head of the Vente Venezuela party, and Venezuela's former UN ambassador Diego Arria, among others, contend that the negotiations are fruitless and only help Maduro to maintain power. Now Guaido seems to be leaning their way.

"A dialogue with a regime that no one believes in is clearly not viable," Guaido said, warning his supporters that a new wave of repression is imminent. "We must warn the international community and prepare ourselves for a political offensive. They're not going to stop us with jail and torture. If the regime does what it plans to do, it will go worse for them, and our response will come."

Cabello gaveled the ANC into session at 2pm ET today to consider motions to strip up to 25 opposition legislators of their congressional immunity.

Since 2016 Maduro's supreme court and subsequently the ANC have whittled down the opposition's presence in the assembly, stripping 22 opposition legislators of their immunity. This includes the three legislators neutralized today when the supreme court upheld an ANC resolution approved in first quarter 2019 stripping them of their immunity — Juan Pablo Garcia of Vente Venezuela, Juan Pablo Guanipa of Primero Justicia, and former central bank chief economist Jose Guerra of Guaido's Voluntad Popular party.

Several of the lawmakers have been arrested, but most have gone into exile to avoid detention.

The government maneuvers over the past 42 months have reduced the number of active opposition legislators to 85. If the ANC executes Maduro's threat to undermine the authority of up to another 25 opposition legislators in a single blow, the number of active deputies would fall to just 60. This would allow the supreme court and the CNE to order the assembly's dissolution and call new legislative elections because of a lack of quorum.

Alternatively, the government could shift the 55 pro-government deputies who left the elected assembly in 2017 to join the ANC to return to the assembly to negotiate alliances with moderately pro-government opposition parties, such as Avanzada Progresista, effectively neutralizing Guaido.

The Norwegian-mediated dialogue in Barbados was supported by the EU, Mexico, Uruguay, Cuba, Russia and China.

Washington has been skeptical from the start. A senior Trump administration official tells Argus that last week's decision to toughen sanctions was intended to put more pressure on Maduro to resign, and scupper a "flawed process in Barbados that Maduro has been manipulating in bad faith to buy time while he works to dismantle the constitutional bases of Guaido's transition presidency."

Government and opposition officials in Caracas say the three-month-long talks failed because Maduro rejected any agreement that would require his departure ahead of new presidential elections.

Maduro had "two inflexible demands," a palace official tells Argus. "He would not resign from the presidency ahead of presidential elections initially agreed in Barbados for April 2020, and national assembly elections currently scheduled for December 2020 would have to be held concurrently with the April 2020 presidential elections."

Maduro was determined to drag out the Barbados talks until the end of 2019, when Guaido's one-year term as National Assembly president would end unless the coalition of opposition parties that won control of the legislature in December 2015 elections voted to re-elect him, the palace official said.