Will Obama Abandon Venezuela?
He’s shamefully silent on a recall vote to rescue the desperate country.
President Obama believes the opening to Cuba is one of his great foreign-policy successes. He’d accomplish a lot more if he helped Venezuela before it closes down. Caracas came to a standstill Wednesday as residents stopped what they were doing for 10 minutes to protest the government’s refusal to allow a presidential recall referendum before year’s end. A million Venezuelans marched on the capital Sept. 1 demanding the vote.
President Nicolás Maduro, who took power in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chávez, would certainly be recalled in a fair vote. Venezuela has triple-digit inflation; shortages of food, medicine and basic household products; and a frightening crime wave. On a Sept. 2 tour of government housing projects in a low-income neighborhood on Margarita Island, Mr. Maduro was chased through the streets by a jeering mob clanging empty pots and pans. A video of the humiliating incident went viral.
Venezuela’s 1999 constitution lays out a nonviolent path to remove an unpopular president through a recall referendum in the third year of his six-year term. An affirmative vote triggers a new election. But the constitution also stipulates that if the vote is held in the fourth year, there is no new election. Instead the vice president takes over and serves the remainder of the term.
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The government-controlled national electoral council is delaying a decision, and soon it will claim a vote can’t be held before the end of the year, though Mr. Maduro was elected a mere 40 days after Chávez’s death.
It is not too late for a 2016 referendum. But that won’t happen without pressure from the international community on Venezuela to respect its own constitutional norms. The Obama Administration once claimed that its outreach to the Cuban dictatorship would remove anti-American hostility in the region and make U.S. leadership more effective. So far there’s little evidence that Mr. Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry have been willing to use U.S. influence to defend Venezuelan democrats.
Some in Washington say Mr. Obama wants to avoid bloodshed. Others might say he is simply letting desperate Venezuela sink.
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