REDSTATE | Published January 10, 2025
The left loves to point at anyone to the right of Che Guevara and shout “Authoritarian!” Few of them know what a real authoritarian government is like, much less what living in one is like.
People in Venezuela do. Venezuelans have been under the boot of Nicolás Maduro for a while now, and he’s making sure his political opposition doesn’t amount to much – even to the point of having them reportedly detained by the police.
Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s aides said she was detained on Thursday, followed moments later by official denials of her arrest, in a confusing episode that capped a day of protests seeking to block President Nicolás Maduro from clinging to power.
It remained unclear what exactly happened after Machado bid farewell to hundreds of supporters, hopped on a motorcycle and raced with her security convoy down a main Caracas avenue.
At 3:21 p.m. local time, Machado’s press team said in a social media post that security forces “violently intercepted” her convoy. Her aides later told The Associated Press that she had been detained, and international condemnation poured in from leaders in Latin America and beyond, demanding her release.
But about an hour later, a proof-of-life, 20-second video of Machado emerged online in which she says she was followed after leaving the “wonderful” rally and had dropped her purse.
So things are a little muddled. This could be a major misunderstanding or a deliberate attempt to intimidate a political opponent.
Maduro’s camp responded in predictable form:
Meanwhile, Maduro’s supporters denied Machado had been detained, claiming that government opponents were trying to spread fake news to generate an international crisis.
“Nobody should be surprised,” Communications Minister Freddy Nanez said. “Especially since it’s coming from the fascists, who were the architects of the dirty trick.”
Now that has a familiar ring to it. But it’s not the American right that is looking at the first few pages of this playbook. Four years of lawfare against a former president speak eloquently to that.
Maduro’s government, some reports indicate, is actually sending members of the notorious Tren de Aragua prison gang to the United States.
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SOURCE: www.redstate.com
RELATED: Maduro’s illegitimate third term in Venezuela
Despite repeated requests from the international community, Nicolás Maduro, has failed to produce any evidence to back up his claimed victory © Matias Delacroix/AP
Published January 10, 2025
On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro plans to defy his own people and the democratic world by inaugurating himself for a third consecutive six-year term after stealing an election last July. A fresh Maduro term would perpetuate a regime responsible for an economic collapse virtually unparalleled in peacetime, and a wave of repression that has jailed an estimated 1,800 political prisoners and triggered an exodus of nearly 8mn refugees abroad, more than from Syria or Ukraine.
The democratic opposition, led by María Corina Machado, has led a courageous and peaceful campaign against Maduro’s fraud, providing evidence via copies of official tally sheets from polling stations to show that opposition candidate Edmundo González won the election by a margin of more than two to one.
González has been living in exile in Spain but has promised to return to Venezuela and defy threats of arrest to claim the presidency on Friday, while Machado has been organising protests from a secret hiding place. Maduro, despite repeated requests from the international community, has failed to produce any evidence to back up his claimed victory, endorsed by allies such as Russia, China and Iran. In power since 2013, Maduro will rely on the military, the police and the feared, Cuban-backed intelligence services to extend his regime.
The Venezuelan leader’s illegitimate third term presents the incoming Trump administration with one of its first big foreign policy challenges. The Biden administration attempted to negotiate with Maduro but its policy failed because it was based on the naive presumption that the Venezuelan leader would surrender power voluntarily. Instead, it allowed Maduro to pocket US concessions on oil sanctions while failing to honour his own promises of a clean election. Maduro’s crackdown since the bogus result and his failure to take up Brazil and Colombia’s offer of negotiation suggest he intends to stay in power for as long as the Venezuelan military will let him.
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