2023-12-04 15:16:31
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is preparing for the 2024 elections by playing two cards: de-escalation with Washington and claiming the Essequibo region.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Nicolas Maduro wants to erase the memory of his contested 2018 re-election. Hugo Chavez’s successor, whom he replaced upon his death in 2013, entered the campaign while Venezuela was plunged into a deep economic crisise and shaken by monster demonstrations, repressed with violence.
The vote, marred by arrests and massive fraud, was ultimately boycotted by the opposition. Maduro re-elected, Venezuela saw itself diplomatically ostracized and economically sanctionednotably by the United States.
Since then, the president has tried, without enthusiasm, to reconnect with the opposition. These sluggish negotiations resulted last Thursday in a theoretical reintegration of the opponents into the ballot. The liberal Maria Corina Machadowho won the opposition primaries hands down, will be able to challenge his ineligibility in court and perhaps run once morest the incumbent president.
Oil as ambassador
At the same time, Nicolas Maduro, a moderate Chavismo, took advantage of the rise of socialism in Latin America to normalize relations with neighbors. The Brazilian president Lula met him in Caracas in May, when his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro had banned him from staying in Brazil. And the Colombia of the socialist Gustavo Petro fully reopened its border with Venezuela in February.
Nicolas Maduro organized a referendum on the annexation of Essequibo, an oil-rich region that Venezuela disputes with Guyana.
But above all, Maduro played the Venezuelan oil bonanza to regain the favor of Western countries, deprived of Russian hydrocarbons by the war in Ukraine. The United States thus announced in mid-October a sanctions relief once morest Venezuelan gas and oil.
But black gold might be a source of new tensions. This Sunday, Nicolas Maduro organized a referendum on the annexation of Essequiboan oil-rich region that Venezuela has disputed for decades with its neighbor, Guyana.
He called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for help to establish the status of this territory of 160,000 km² – more than two thirds of Guyana.
Annexation, an electoral calculation?
Unsurprisingly, Venezuelans voted 95% to reject the jurisdiction of the ICJ and annex Essequibo. “This victory belongs to all the Venezuelan people without discrimination,” declared Nicolas Maduro. By playing on the nationalist fiberhe cornered the opposition, which also claims Essequibo but did not want to support the presidential camp.
Maria Corina Machado was content to point out the low participation to denounce a “distraction”while the country is struggling to emerge from its long economic crisis and inequalities are exploding as the dollar replaces the bolivar.
Is this referendum therefore an electoral calculation or the prelude to an attempt at annexation, copied from Russian stagings in Ukraine? “There’s nothing to be scared of in the hours, days and months to come,” assured Guyanese President Irfaan Ali this Sunday.
Of the Venezuelan troops are on the border with Guyana, but they are already struggling to control the border region. Above all, an invasion would abolish any hope of diplomatic normalization and sign the return of American sanctions. However, it seems difficult for Nicolas Maduro to do nothing, now that he has received a blank check from the Venezuelans.
The profile
- Neither in 1962in Caracas.
- 1999: Member of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian movement, he was elected deputy.
- 2006: He is appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.
- 2013: He replaced Hugo Chavez upon his death, and was elected president a month later.
- 2018: He was re-elected president following a controversial vote.
- 2023: He organizes a referendum on the annexation of Essequibo and wins.
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