The Economist - USA (2020-11-28)

28 The Americas The EconomistNovember 28th 2020

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election gave Mr Guaidó constitutional

grounds to assume the interim presidency

in January of that year. The administration

of Donald Trump tightened sanctions,

seeking to deny Venezuela income from

oil, its main export. The hope was that an-

gry Venezuelans, joined by the armed

forces, would switch their loyalties to Mr

Guaidó within weeks. Fair national elec-

tions would soon follow.

Twenty-one months later the opposi-

tion is discredited and divided. The armed

forces have not defected. The regime looks

entrenched. Some components of the op-

position will participate in the legislative

election, thinking it is better to have a toe-

hold on power than no purchase at all. Mr

Guaidó’s allies plan a referendum oppos-

ing the vote, to be held mostly online.

Venezuelans are more miserable than

ever. American sanctions come on top of

years of economic mismanagement by the

Bolivarian regime. Since 2017 they have

cost the Venezuelan state $17bn-31bn in

revenue, estimates the Washington Office

on Latin America (wola), a think-tank.

That is between a third and a half of this

year’s shrunken gdp. This year alone the

government has had to slash its imports by

half, worsening the misery.

The effects are felt by people like Alicia

Hernández, a former lawyer from Ciudad

Bolívar in southern Venezuela, who walks

up to 20km (12 miles) a day to find fuel and

food for her children. In the once opulent

oil city of Maracaibo on the northern coast

residents make home-brew petrol from

stolen crude. The exodus of Venezuelans

since Mr Maduro became president in 2013

has reached 5m people, a sixth of the popu-

lation, the largest such movement ever in

South America.

Now, despite his catastrophic record in

office, he looks forward to untrammelled

power. Once the psuvwins the assembly

election it will choose one of its own to pre-

side. Mr Guaidó will lose his title on Janu-

ary 5th, when the term of the current legis-

lature ends. His allies deny this. The

forthcoming vote “is not an election”, de-

clares Leopoldo López, Mr Guaidó’s men-

tor, who is in exile in Spain. “The National

Assembly is not being replaced. There will

just be a continuation of what is already in

place constitutionally.”

In fact, Venezuela’s constitution does

not spell out what should happen if a legis-

lature’s term ends without a duly elected

successor. “There’s far from a consensus on

this issue among constitutional scholars

in Venezuela,” says Geoff Ramsey of wola.

The main risk for Mr Guaidó is that

doubt over his claim to the interim presi-

dency will erode his international backing.

Mr Ramsey expects “a sort of slow walk

away” from support. European “backslid-

ers” are looking for a way to distance them-

selves from Mr Guaidó, grumble diplomats

who represent more hawkish governments

in Caracas. Among them are Spain and Por-

tugal, which are uneasy about continuing

to recognise an interim president who has

no power nor much prospect of winning it.

Mr Trump, who will still be in office on

January 5th, is unlikely to waver. His back-

ing of Mr Guaidó helped him win Florida in

the United States’ presidential election. Mr

Biden, who won that election, will adjust

American policy. He has called Mr Maduro

“a dictator, plain and simple” and ex-

pressed support for Mr Guaidó. But the

president-elect has also rejected the idea of

engineering regime change.

The Biden presidency is expected to fo-

cus its diplomacy on countries such as Tur-

key and China that continue to do business

with Mr Maduro’s regime, thereby prop-

ping it up. They would seek ways to allevi-

ate the humanitarian crisis while pushing

Mr Maduro to negotiate seriously with the

opposition on restoring democracy. Mr Bi-

den is thought to favour modifying sanc-

tions to lessen the pain felt by ordinary

Venezuelans.

But democracy would mean the demise

of the regime, which is not in its plans. It is

“incapable of negotiating”, fumed a Euro-

pean diplomat in Caracas after the abortive

effort to delay the legislative election.

Changing Mr Maduro’s mind will require

pressure from his friends. For now, he is

bent on “rescuing” the National Assembly.

Bringing “happiness and hope” to Venezu-

elans is another matter. 7

H

e will live forever on that sunny June

afternoon in 1986 in the Aztec stadium

in Mexico City. It was the quarter-final of

the World Cup between Argentina and Eng-

land. In the 55th minute Diego Armando

Maradona collected the ball in the Argen-

tine half and carved his way through the

England defence as if it wasn’t there before

striking a low hard shot. It was one of the

greatest goals of all time. It came just four

minutes after Maradona, with the match

scoreless, had risen to meet a miscued

clearance in the England penalty area and

punched the ball into the net. He had

scored, he said later, “a bit with the head

and a bit with the hand of God”. With no

video refereeing back then, the goal stood.

It was, he said, a kind of revenge for Argen-

tina’s defeat at English hands in the Falk-

lands (Malvinas) war four years earlier.

Between them, those goals summed up

Mr Maradona, who died of a heart attack

aged 60 on November 25th. Blessed with

divine talent, he had little respect for the

rules in a life that offered riches but which

was always a struggle. He embodied the

The blessed and cursed life of an Argentine icon

Diego Maradona

Divine and damned

With God on his side

CorrectionLast week we wrote that scalloped

hammerhead sharks lay eggs (“Piscine plunder”,

November 21st). In fact, they bear live young. Sorry.