BRICS isn’t exactly picky, but has just rejected Venezuela
Three months after stealing a presidential election, the Venezuelan regime is trying to give the impression that the matter is closed. On November 4th an ebullient President Nicolás Maduro joked on state television that one remaining detail he needed to clear up before being re-inaugurated on January 10th was the dress code. “Wear a tie, if possible,” quipped Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the rubber-stamp national assembly.
The carefree bonhomie is deceptive. Mr Maduro, who claims that he won the election on July 28th even though the opposition has presented clear evidence showing that he lost by a landslide, has not escaped the consequences of his fraud. One sign of that came at the Brics summit held in the Russian city of Kazan from October 22nd to 24th. Mr Maduro attended on the sidelines, his first trip abroad since the vote. The visit was meant to make him look like a legitimate leader on the world stage, with powerful friends in the global south. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping both obliged by shaking hands with the dictator in public view. But in protest at the electoral deceit, Brazil’s left-wing government vetoed Venezuela’s attempt to join the bloc.
That was a humiliation for Mr Maduro, seeing that 13 other countries, even his bankrupt ally Cuba, were accepted into the group. Mr Maduro is understood to have privately berated his foreign minister, Yván Gil, for not warning him of the risk of rejection. In public the regime’s response has been to hurl insults at the Brazilian government. Venezuela’s foreign ministry has accused Brazil, which has led efforts to negotiate a resolution to Venezuela’s crisis, of “inexplicable and immoral aggression”. It described Celso Amorim, the measured envoy of Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as “a messenger of American imperialism”. Venezuela’s police shared an image depicting Lula’s silhouette with the caption: “If you mess with Venezuela, you fade away.”
That was followed by an equally bad-tempered falling-out with Venezuela’s other leftist neighbour in the region, Colombia. Mr Gil accused his counterpart there, Luis Gilberto Murillo, of being “cowardly” after he said Colombia’s government could not recognise Mr Maduro’s re-election unless the regime produced paper receipts from the polls as evidence of its claimed victory: an impossibility, since the official results were invented.
“They are operating like a cult,” said a businessman based in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, describing the mood within the clique around the president. “Everyone has to pretend to believe in the big lie [that Mr Maduro won the election].” Waverers are being expelled from ministries and state companies. On October 21st it was announced that an able former oil minister, Pedro Tellechea, who had resigned citing ill health just days before, had been arrested and accused of sharing privileged information with the United States. At least 12 foreigners, including seven from the United States, have been arrested since the election, most of them accused of planning terrorist attacks.
Flights from countries whose governments have criticised Venezuela, including Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic, have been suspended. Efforts to get rid of the opposition that has exposed Mr Maduro’s unpopularity continue. Almost 2,000 political opponents (including 69 children) are in jail, most of them detained since the election, according to Foro Penal, a Venezuelan human-rights group.
The true president-elect, Edmundo González, is in exile in Spain. The opposition’s popular leader, María Corina Machado, who was banned from running for office but helped inspire millions to vote for Mr González, is in hiding. On November 6th she posted a note on social media congratulating Donald Trump on his election. In his first term he had pondered military action to topple the Maduro regime. “We have always counted on you,” she said. Mr Maduro breezily pretends that Venezuela’s turmoil is over. He is fooling no one. ■
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