Maduro's Party Likely To Beat Weakened Opposition In Parliamentary Elections - Experts

Maduro's Party Likely to Beat Weakened Opposition in Parliamentary Elections - Experts

Venezuela's opposition seem to have started to lose its ground ahead of the possible parliamentary elections in 2020, after a year of the power struggle between their US-backed leader, Juan Guaido, and President Nicolas Maduro, months of political unrest, as well as an economic decline from US sanctions, experts told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th January, 2020) Venezuela's opposition seem to have started to lose its ground ahead of the possible parliamentary elections in 2020, after a year of the power struggle between their US-backed leader, Juan Guaido, and President Nicolas Maduro, months of political unrest, as well as an economic decline from US sanctions, experts told Sputnik.

Roughly a year ago, 36-year old Guaido, then-head of the opposition-led National Assembly, declared himself the interim president of Venezuela despite the fact that Maduro had legitimately won the election in 2018. The United States immediately backed the self-declared president and imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela. Maduro, meanwhile, accused Guaido of being a US puppet who collaborated with Washington in an attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government to control the country's vast natural resources.

Guaido's status among the opposition took a nosedive at the onset of 2020 as the Venezuelan parliament elected pro-Maduro lawmaker Luis Parra to replace him as its speaker on January 5.

"The Venezuelan opposition and its allies have made very serious mistakes, such as not making full use of the momentum at the time Guaido took the reins of the National Assembly and invoked the Constitution to declare his legitimate presidency. After one year, it has lost valuable steam, making any transition much more difficult," Enrico Mario Santi, a research professor at California's Claremont Graduate University, told Sputnik.

He added that the presence of international actors such as Russia, which has supported Maduro's claim to the presidency since the beginning, reduced the risk of US military intervention in Venezuela.

"The upcoming, largely cosmetic, elections have no credibility, given the regime's previous fraudulent exercises in democratic consensus," Santi stated.

Meanwhile, Daniel Hellinger, emeritus professor of international relations at Missouri's Webster University, told Sputnik that the United States was "too preoccupied with the middle East to want to get entangled in a military operation of any size in Venezuela."

"I think that given the exodus from the country, the economic problems, and the lack of confidence of Venezuelans in the entire political class, the most likely outcome of the Assembly elections will be a PSUV [United Socialist Party of Venezuela] victory in a low turnout election," he added.

After Guaido declared himself interim president, the US imposed a series of sanctions on Venezuela and froze the US-based assets of the state oil company PDVSA. Some European nations followed suit by cutting off the government's access to foreign assets.

Russia has been joined by China, Turkey and many others in backing Maduro as the only legitimate president of Venezuela.