The big question about the U.S. sanctions on seven top Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations is not whether they deserve them — of course they do — but whether the measure won’t give Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro a golden excuse to usurp even more powers and further clamp down on the opposition.
As was to be expected, Maduro reacted with characteristic zeal to President Barack Obama’s executive order freezing the assets and denying visas to the Venezuelan officials.
Wrapping himself in the national flag, and obscuring the fact that the U.S. sanctions are only targeted against selected government officials, Maduro claimed that Obama’s measures amount to “the greatest U.S. act of aggression ever committed against Venezuela.” Hours later, Maduro asked the Venezuela’s government-controlled Congress to grant him new extraordinary powers, which it did on Wednesday.
Maduro, who faces an economic collapse at home, found precious material within Obama’s executive order to back up his long-standing narrative that the U.S. “empire” wants to invade Venezuela.
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Etiquetas: Andres Oppenheimer, Maduro, Obama, Venezuela
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