What the commentators said

With passions running high after this week’s election, “things could get ugly very quickly” in Venezuela, said Joshua Keating on Slate. Fringe elements in the opposition are talking about “armed resistance”, and there are millions of illegal weapons in private hands. Then there’s the danger of a military coup. Discontent is said to be widespread among army officers and will only deepen if they’re called on to suppress even larger mass protests. We had all thought that the era of political unrest and army takeovers in Latin America had passed: no country in the region now suffers from serious civil conflict. But events in Venezuela could mark a return to the bad old days. Small wonder so many Venezuelans are choosing to flee, said Mary O’grady in The Wall Street Journal. More than 150,000 are thought to be living in Colombia illegally, and Venezuelans now make up the single largest group of asylum seekers in the US. “On the streets of Venezuela, it is now fight or flight.”

One of Venezuela’s biggest problems is Maduro himself, said Andrew Buncombe in The Independent. His charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chávez, at least built his “Bolivarian Revolution” around the ballot box, and in doing so won four presidential elections. Maduro, who has none of his late mentor’s political skills and charisma, has had no such scruples about securing a mandate. These days he surrounds himself with “hard-core” loyalists: with approval ratings at just 20%, he would never risk a fair election. For the international community, there are no easy answers, said David Smilde in The New York Times. Washington has talked of imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, the source of 95% of the country’s export revenue. But that would just impose further suffering on ordinary Venezuelans. Besides, sanctions play into the hands of a regime that likes to blame the US and other “imperial powers” for all the country’s woes. Whatever happens, the US must “stay at the margins”.