Long gone is the light-hearted, almost avuncular, version of Nicolás Maduro who attempted to charm the world in the lead-up to Venezuela’s presidential election. The man who took the stage at Miraflores Palace last week was exhausted — and angry.
How severely he miscalculated the opposition’s power was on full display for the world.
Protests against what many say is Maduro’s fraudulent win swept the capital of Caracas, even as the government had started arresting Venezuelans in the fiercest crackdown of his 11-year rule.
His rival, the ever-popular María Corina Machado, and her party had published a more detailed accounting of the voting results than the government ever had in the past, showing their candidate, Edmundo González, won by a landslide. Pressure to share election results mounted from even Maduro’s closest allies abroad. The prospect of sanctions relief disappeared, and so did the little legitimacy he had left.
So, in his first international press conference in almost two years, Maduro yelled. He screamed. He waved his hands. He clenched his fists. He threatened.
Over a half hour, his speech intensified and his voice grew louder, until he was screaming.
Perhaps in an attempt to regain it, Venezuela’s president has now ratcheted up the ire against the opposition and its supporters like never before.
Maduro has said Machado and González “should be behind bars.” He has already arrested 2,000 protesters and promised to send them to maximum-security prisons for 30 years, the same sentence doled out to murderers.
At least 14 media workers have been deported, according to the country’s journalists union.
“Maduro has miscalculated — badly,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“In order to remain in power, Maduro has moved the country in the direction of Nicaragua, which is a total police state.”
Taking repression to an even greater extreme in Venezuela risks the future of its people and its economic recovery. The current political situation could push companies and investors who recently struck oil deals with Venezuela to hit pause, if not pull out entirely.
