Igniting the post-Chavez explosion
By Roger F. Noriega and Jose R. Cardenas
Hugo Chavez’s death could very well result in an uncertain and unstable succession battle that will define Venezuela’s future for better or worse. With that country one of the world’s largest exporters of crude oil and the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States, the Obama administration needs to get active in helping to shape events in a positive direction.
It will not be easy, given the levels of acrimony and polarization that Mr. Chavez leaves in his wake. Still, it presents an extraordinary opportunity to pull Venezuela back into the peaceful community of regional nations, after more than a decade of Mr. Chavez’s troublemaking that has set back regional prospects for stability and economic development.
It may be that the late Venezuelan leader had an emotional connection with the country’s poor and marginalized, but the reality is that he is leaving behind an impending socioeconomic meltdown, a faltering oil sector, complicity with drug trafficking and terrorism, rampant street crime and a legacy of corrupt institutions and rigged elections.
Because Mr. Chavez was never sworn in this past January for his next term in office after his return from Cuba where he was receiving medical treatment, the Venezuelan Constitution mandates that power should be transferred to the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, who must call new elections.
Yet that is not what has happened. The Venezuelan foreign minister announced Tuesday that Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Mr. Chavez’s anointed successor, would be interim president and call new elections — even though he has no constitutional standing to do so.
How that sits with Mr. Cabello remains to be seen, but it is well-known that Mr. Cabello and Mr. Maduro do not always see eye to eye, especially regarding the heavy Cuban presence in micromanaging Venezuelan affairs of state.
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