(Bloomberg) — With his challengers scattered and reeling, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is set to be sworn in for a third six-year term on Friday, shrugging off international condemnation of a sham election and a brutal crackdown on dissent.
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Maduro, 62, was declared without evidence to be the winner of last July’s vote by an electoral authority stocked with his appointees. He will take the presidential oath in Caracas in the absence of once-close allies such as Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, highlighting just how isolated the strongman has become in the dark aftermath of the election.
Months of intimidation have forced Maduro’s most prominent opponents to choose whether to compromise their safety to challenge his rule. Edmundo González, who showed proof that he obtained nearly 70% of the vote last year, later fled to Spain under threat of arrest. He has pledged to return to Venezuela on Friday to assume the presidency despite the government’s threats to shoot down his plane or arrest him upon arrival.
Since the election, Maduro has jailed thousands of his critics and purged what’s left of the opposition from the country. An estimated 100 opposition leaders and many more activists from the Unitary Platform have fled the country since late July. At least 25 arrest warrants against opposition leaders were issued in the first month after the election. Dozens of passports were canceled.
Tensions reached a new high on Thursday when aides to María Corina Machado, the most popular opposition leader, said she was detained for about two hours after making her first public appearance in months. Machado overwhelmingly won the 2023 opposition primary but was barred from running and selected González as her stand-in candidate.
Though Machado was set free, the encounter rattled supporters because the Maduro regime has been cracking down with renewed vigor on opponents. At least two dozen opposition officials and human rights activists have been detained since the start of the year, including a relative of González and Enrique Márquez, a harsh critic of Maduro’s policies and former vice president of the opposition-led National Assembly.
On early Friday, Tachira Governor Freddy Bernal said Venezuela would close its border with Colombia for 24 hours due an “international conspiracy.”
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The intimidation campaign may be Maduro’s attempt to show strength, but it can also be viewed as a sign of vulnerability, said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at Washington’s Atlantic Council. Hard-liners in his government have gained ground, and those favoring some type of agreement with Washington have weakened.
“Maduro does not feel safe at all at this moment,” Ramsey said.
Joe Biden’s administration has already responded to Maduro’s repression with new sanctions, and the US president met with González earlier this week. His successor Donald Trump made clear for the first time Thursday that he supports Machado and González, referring to the latter as “president-elect.”
Colombia’s Petro, Maduro’s most frequent visitor among world leaders in recent years, said earlier this week he would skip Friday’s inauguration, citing recent arrests. Despite their close ties, Brazil’s Lula has called for Maduro to release the ballots to prove his supposed victory.
Ramsey pointed to the exaggerated response of Venezuelan security forces to Thursday’s protests as a sign of how threatened Maduro feels. “It’s easy to overestimate Maduro’s strength at this point, but he’s asking a lot of the military and security forces.”
Still, Maduro is a survivor who has weathered catastrophic economic conditions and ostracism from much of the Western world. This week alone he showed his playbook for keeping the population in check even though it voted overwhelmingly against him.
The regime offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to González’s capture, publishing his photo on wanted posters it distributed on social media and across the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. Heavily armed security forces and pro-government motorcycle gangs known as colectivos were also deployed among major cities.
During Thursday’s protests, regime forces dressed in riot gear used tear gas to try and disperse the crowds in Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia. Crowds waved the flag, honked horns and blew whistles, with some shouting, “This government is going to fall.”
Trump praised demonstrators against the regime in his social-media post Thursday, calling for Machado and González to remain “safe and alive.” His comments — and his hawkish cabinet choices — suggest he could take as hard a line as he did against Maduro during his first term.
But after winning the US election on a platform of deporting undocumented migrants, Trump may also be tempted to cut a deal with Maduro in exchange for accepting planes full of Venezuelans who made their way north. Maduro, on the other hand, has repeatedly said he expects Trump’s presidency to improve relations between the two countries.
Venezuelan bonds have been rising along other high-yield credits, touching their highest levels since August this week, with sovereign notes maturing in 2027 trading above 17 cents, according to traders and indicative pricing data compiled by Bloomberg. Some analysts like Barclays’ economist Alejandro Arreaza say investors are turning to the trade just to have the “optionality” of a potential catalyst ahead that could trigger regime change.
Even if the US refuses to recognize Maduro’s presidency, the once-fervent opposition is a shell of its former self, making its effort to pry him from power look less and less attainable.
Venezuela will hold parliamentary and regional elections for governors, mayors and other lawmakers due later this year, giving Maduro a way to further solidify his grip on the country for years to come.
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