To understand what is happening in Venezuela one must understand some terms proper to the very peculiar language of that country, which are different from other Spanish speaking nations.

Until the beginnings of 2019, almost no one outside of Venezuela had ever heard of Guaidó, that is not a Venezuelanism, but a person who has dared to become the first American to proclaim himself President of a Republic in a public square. Even to that moment, four out of five Venezuelans did not know who he was.

For the most knowledgeable in politics his person was associated with the guarimbas, that are violent actions in the streets, and the guarimberos, the people who burnt down hospitals and even set fire to live Chavistas.

Today Guaidó proclaims himself the PE of Venezuela. This acronym is very singular in that nation. It means “Presidente Encargado” (president in charge or acting president), a position that does not exist in most of the planet and which is not the same as “Presidente interino” (interim president), a position which is assigned to the Vice-president or official who assumes temporarily or permanently in case of a head of state vacancy, while he is on a trip or is sick, or when he has renounced the post for a variety of reasons, in which case the interim must complete the rest of the constitutional mandate.

According to the Venezuelan Constitution, a “Presidente Encargado” is someone who comes to be head of state for a few weeks since his only responsibility is, within the period of one month. to call for presidential elections. In spite of the fact that Guaidó hates Chavism and Maduro, the position that he claims was created by the Constitution of Chavez; and the previous “Presidente Encargado” was Maduro himself, who, when Chavez died, being his Vice-president did not complete his constitutional mandate (in spite of the fact that the Comandante had been recently elected), but instead, a few days later, called for presidential elections, which he won by a little more than 50% of the votes, by which he became the “constitutional President”.

Guaidó claims the title of “Presidente Encargado” all over the world, in spite of the fact that he does not fulfil the conditions of the Venezuelan Constitution in order to claim this title, since there is a President in office who enjoys good health and has not been removed from his post by the Judicial Power, as prescribed in the Carta Magna.

Even if many people might dispute this, all accept that the “Presidencia Encargada” should fulfil a simple and central task: organize elections within one month. Nevertheless, Guaidó is claiming this position since January 10 and we are now nearly three months from that date, a period in which he has never wanted to call elections, not even after the manner of the Catalan parliament, defying the State Police.

Therefore, the mandate of this “Presidente Encargado” has already finished, but the argument that Elliot Abrams, the US official in charge of Venezuela and the true head of Guaidó, is that the “presidencia encargada” will be automatically renewed until Maduro leaves and he can call elections.

Nevertheless, once what they call the “usurpation” (by Maduro) ends, their promise is not to call elections in one month, but in one year, since first they must form a “transitional government” (a figure that does not exist in the Venezuelan Magna Carta) which would apply a whole new economic plan and a radical cleansing of the State and its institutions, bringing about many purges and privatizations.

Every president of a republic, be it for a long period, interim or acting, should fulfil a series of requirements such as controlling a territory and its armed forces, but Guaidó does not even control his own office, which is protected by Maduro’s guards.

Every president should have a cabinet, with its prime minister and ministers, who should take collective decisions. However, Guaidó has none of this, he has not named even one minister, but he has named ambassadors and administrators of Venezuelan state enterprises abroad, that the US has seized from Venezuela and that, without a cabinet or collective body, there is no-one to supervise where these billion-dollar funds are going.

This president, who does not name ministers nor has a team or house of government, flaunts his spouse as “first lady”, although this post, or that of “acting first lady” should not apply due to the very circumstantial role that corresponds to someone who constitutionally can only be one month in power. 

Any president in a democracy should respect the 3 powers (executive, legislative and judicial), each of which should be maintained independent of the others. Nevertheless, Guaidó claims to be president of the executive power as well as the legislative (he has not handed over the presidency of the National Assembly to his vice-president) nor does he abide by the decisions of the judicial power.

In fact this “president” concentrates in his own person all three powers, in spite of the fact that he never took part in a presidential election and he reached his position as president of the National Assembly and supposedly of Venezuela without having competed with any other candidate, but only through having been designated by the head of his own party, Voluntad Popular, the fifth in importance in Venezuela.

In spite of his claim in favour of democracy and constitutionality, the PE overrides all of that and in fact assumes the role of a caudillo and of someone who seeks to be a dictator.

Since no police station, tribunal, minister or battalion pays any attention to his orders, now he claims the attribution to call on the US to invade his own country so that, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, they can bring him to power; something that Trump will not do since his administration only wants to utilize him until they find someone with a greater capacity of statesmanship who will serve to hand over the Venezuelan petroleum resources to their multinationals.

Finally, we have the expression “Peo”, which Guaidó constantly employs in his proclamations, calling for the population to undertake a “peo” before every blackout. This term that comes from an abbreviation of a word that means flatulence, is employed to call for or spur unrest or an uprising.

And the “peo”, the same as the “guarimba” is a way of calling for street violence. In fact, since Guaidó returned to Caracas on March 4, there have been four mega blackouts across Venezuela, something that paradoxically had not occurred before and which have taken place on a scale never before seen in the world, covering a territory of about a million square kilometres.

These blackouts destroy drinking water services, refrigeration of food and medicines, industrial production, businesses and transport, and open the door to pillaging and criminality. Guaidó, instead of seeking an agreement with the government to work together for peace and the re-establishment of electric power, encourages peoples to use these power cuts to make violent action and overthrow the government. 

Symptomatically, in his speech on Saturday March 30, Guaidó said that when the blackout returns there should immediately be a peo, and this came about within a few hours.

Never before in American history has there been a PE who calls to take power with peos and guarimbas.

Never before in the hemisphere have we seen a “presidente encargado” whose government has not been elected nor called for elections and that, in addition, lacks a government or ministers.

Never before have we seen a president who, instead of seeking to work in favour of his compatriots, celebrates the blackouts that cost so many lives and resources (and where the hidden hand that causes them is the same one that is on his side) and, as the only way to take power, calls for a military intervention of all his neighbours and the greatest power of the planet.

05/04/2019

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Isaac Bigio is a political economist and historian graduated from the London School of Economics where he taught Venezuelan and Latin American politics.