Venezuelan hit with sanctions
Luisa Ortega Diaz (left), Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, speaks Monday during a news conference at her office in Caracas, Venezuela, in opposition to a constitutional assembly that endows President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling party with vast powers. The U.S. on Monday added Maduro to the list of Venezuelans targeted by financial sanctions.
CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolas Maduro claimed a popular mandate Monday to dramatically recast Venezuela’s political system, dismissing U.S. sanctions imposed on him and condemnations by his domestic opponents and governments around the world.
Maduro earlier Monday joined the steadily growing list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials targeted by U.S. financial sanctions — an escalation of a tactic that so far has failed to alter Venezuelan government leaders’ behavior.
Electoral authorities said more than 8 million Venezuelans voted Sunday to create a constitutional assembly endowing Maduro’s ruling party with virtually unlimited powers. However, that figure is widely disputed by independent analysts.
President Donald Trump’s administration backed away from earlier threats to sanction Venezuela’s oil industry, which could undermine Maduro’s government but also raise U.S. gas prices and deepen Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.
Monday’s announced U.S. sanctions freeze any assets Maduro may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with him. The sanctions were outlined in a brief notice by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ahead of the White House announcement.
The monetary impact of the sanctions wasn’t immediately clear because Maduro’s holdings in U.S. jurisdictions, if he has any, weren’t publicized.
Monday’s move follows through on a U.S. threat last week of action against Maduro and his socialist government if they went ahead with Sunday’s election. Opposition leaders in Venezuela called the election a power grab.
“Yesterday’s illegitimate elections confirm that Maduro is a dictator who disregards the will of the Venezuelan people,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. “By sanctioning Maduro, the United States makes clear our opposition to the policies of his regime and our support for the people of Venezuela who seek to return their country to a full and prosperous democracy.”
He warned of further U.S. penalties against Maduro’s allies.
“Anyone who participates in this illegitimate [constituent assembly] could be exposed to future U.S. sanctions for their role in undermining democratic processes and institutions in Venezuela,” Mnuchin said.
“Maduro is not just a bad leader,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at a White House news conference with Mnuchin. “He is a now a dictator.”
Maduro swiftly dismissed the measures, saying on television that they were imposed because he didn’t obey the “North American empire.” He added: “Impose all the sanctions that you want, but I’m a free president.”
Maduro said Monday evening that he had no intention of deviating from plans to rewrite the constitution and go after a string of enemies, from independent Venezuelan news channels to gunmen he claimed were sent by neighboring Colombia to disrupt the vote as part of an international conspiracy led by the man he calls “Emperor Donald Trump.”
“They don’t intimidate me. The threats and sanctions of the empire don’t intimidate me for a moment,” Maduro said on national television. “I don’t listen to orders from the empire, not now or ever. … Bring on more sanctions, Donald Trump.”
Venezuela’s official election results would mean that the ruling party won more support than it had in any national election since 2013. The country is suffering from a cratering economy, spiraling inflation, shortages of medicines and malnutrition among its population.
Independent analysts and opposition leaders estimated that the actual voter turnout Sunday was less than half the government’s claim. The election was monitored by government-allied observers but no internationally recognized poll monitors.
Maduro has said the new assembly will begin to govern within a week. He said he would use the assembly’s powers to bar opposition candidates from running in December’s gubernatorial elections unless they sit down with his party to negotiate an end to hostilities that have generated four months of protests, and have left at least 120 people dead and nearly 2,000 wounded.
Maduro says a new constitution is the only way to end such conflicts.
“The people have delivered the constitutional assembly,” Maduro said on national television. “More than 8 million in the middle of threats.”
This Thursday, the new Constituent Assembly made up entirely of government supporters — including Maduro’s wife and son — is to replace the democratically elected legislators in Venezuela’s National Assembly building.
On Monday, some opposition lawmakers defiantly went to that building and vowed to continue carrying out their duties.
“Nothing and nobody will prevent us from fulfilling the mandate that the people have given us,” opposition lawmaker Delsa Solorzano said in a video that she shot outside the assembly building Monday morning. “That’s why an important number of lawmakers came today, to protect our space and to protect the will of the people.”
VOTE TOTALS CHALLENGED
National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced just before midnight Sunday that turnout in that day’s election was 41.53 percent, or 8,089,320 people.
The electoral council’s vote counts in the past have been seen as reliable and generally accurate, but this time the announcement was widely mocked.
“If it wasn’t a tragedy … if it didn’t mean more crisis, the electoral council’s number would almost make you laugh,” opposition leader Freddy Guevara said on Twitter.
Maduro has threatened that one of the constitutional assembly’s first acts will be to jail Guevara for inciting violence.
An exit poll based on surveys at 110 voting centers and conducted by New York investment bank Torino Capital and a Venezuela public opinion company estimated that 3.6 million people had cast ballots, or about 18.5 percent of registered voters.
The same pollsters noted that Venezuela has an estimated 2.6 million government employees, “suggesting that a large fraction of the votes” could have been cast by them.
Luisa Ortega Diaz, Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, who broke with the government in March, on Monday declared the vote fraudulent. She suggested that Maduro and his inner circle, including a vice president accused by the U.S. government of drug trafficking, would now seek to use the new assembly to monopolize money and power.
“How will we control the public budget now? How will we know how much and in what things money is being invested? How amazing for them,” she said.
OPPOSITION WOES
Opposition leaders are facing their own test of public confidence after Sunday’s vote.
“Today I feel crushed, but not because of the results, because we knew that the government would cheat,” said Victoria Daboin, a 25-year-old who has been protesting since April. “I feel depressed because today everything looks normal, as if nothing had happened.”
Many credit the opposition with bravely challenging a repressive regime. But at a time when the socialist government is signaling a more radical stage of rule, some Venezuelans express concern that no single opposition leader has managed to emerge as Maduro’s obvious challenger.
A top contender, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, remains under house arrest and sidelined from public activities.
“Where’s the leader who has mobilized people in the slums because they believe in him?” said Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Caracas-based pollster Datanalisis. “People in the slums are scared, but when you have a leader you love, that barrier can be overcome.”
Some dissident voices are pressing the opposition to accelerate the setup of an essentially parallel government.
On July 16, the opposition held an informal election in which it reported 7.6 million people rejected the creation of the new constituent assembly. After that vote, the opposition announced a move to create its own “government of national unity.”
But the opposition’s most substantial move in that direction — the selection of new magistrates to challenge the authority of the current pro-government supreme court — has resulted in three judges being arrested and several others going into hiding.
There is also a risk that a more violent faction of the opposition will grow, gradually creating a low-grade conflict. Masked young men and women with rocks and Molotov cocktails have already been seeking to take the fight to the government.
The president of the opposition-led National Assembly, Julio Borges, told Venezuelan news channel Globovision on Monday that Maduro’s foes would continue protesting until they get free elections and a change of government.