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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">Juan Guaidó: The Man Who Would Be
President of Venezuela Doesn’t Have a Constitutional Leg to
Stand On</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Roger Harris - February
8, 2019<br>
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<p>Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful
president of Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, a man of
impeccable illegitimacy, was <a
href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/">exposed</a>
by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal as “a product of a
decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite
regime change trainers.” Argentinian sociologist Marco
Teruggi described Guaidó in the same article as “a
character that has been <a
href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/">created</a>
for this circumstance” of regime change. Here, his
constitutional credentials to be interim president of
Venezuela are deconstructed.</p>
<p>Educated at George Washington University in DC,
Guaidó was virtually unknown in his native Venezuela
before being thrust on to the world stage in a rapidly
unfolding series of events. In a <a
href="https://www.conelmazodando.com.ve/oposicion-sin-liderazgo-81-de-los-venezolanos-no-sabe-quien-es-juan-guaido-encuesta">poll</a>
conducted a little more than a week before Guaidó
appointed himself president of the country, 81% of
Venezuelans had never even heard of the 35-year-old.</p>
<p>To make a <a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-call-from-pence-helped-set-an-uncertain-new-course-in-venezuela-11548430259?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0c2ae8b0-656d-4bfa-9d93-61a4b8eb8e12">short
story</a> shorter, US Vice President Pence phoned
Guaidó on the evening of January 22<sup>rd</sup> and
asked him how’d he like to be made president of
Venezuela. The next day, Guaidó announced that he
considered himself president of Venezuela, followed
within minutes by US President Trump confirming the
self-appointment.</p>
<p>A few weeks before on January 5, Guaidó had been
selected as president of Venezuela’s National
Assembly, their unicameral legislature. He had been
elected to the assembly from a coastal district with
26% of the vote. It was his party’s turn for the
presidency of the body, and he was hand-picked for the
position. Guaidó, even within his own party, was not
in the top leadership.</p>
<p>Guaidó’s party, Popular Will, is a far-right marginal
group whose most enthusiastic boosters are John
Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will
had adopted a strategy of regime change by
extra-parliamentary means rather than engage in the
democratic electoral process and had not participated
in recent Venezuelan elections.</p>
<p>Although anointed by Trump and company, Guaidó’s
Popular Will Party is not representative of the
“Venezuelan opposition,” which is a fractious bunch
whose hatred of Maduro is only matched by their
abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate
<a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-election-analysis/maduro-challenger-shakes-up-venezuelas-presidential-vote-idUSKCN1GU04N?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0c2ae8b0-656d-4bfa-9d93-61a4b8eb8e12">Henri
Falcón</a>, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a
neoliberal austerity platform, had been vehemently
opposed by Popular Will who demanded that he join
their US-backed <a
href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2018-03-03/new-evidence-the-trump-administration-is-meddling-in-venezuelas-elections?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0c2ae8b0-656d-4bfa-9d93-61a4b8eb8e12">boycott</a>
of the election.</p>
<p>The Venezuelan news outlet, <em>Ultimas Noticias</em>,
reported that prominent opposition politician Henrique
Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013,
“affirmed during an interview that the majority of <a
href="http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/politica/capriles-partidos-no-apoyaban-autojuramentacion-de-guaido/">opposition
parties did not agree</a> with the self-swearing in
of Juan Guaidó as interim president of the country.” <a
href="https://www.aporrea.org/oposicion/n337146.html">Claudio Fermin</a>,
president of the party Solutions for Venezuela, wrote
“we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in
coming to an understanding, we believe Venezuelans
need to <a
href="https://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/n337622.html">part
ways with the extremist</a> sectors that only offer
hatred, revenge, lynching.” Key opposition governor of
the State of Táchira, Laidy Gómez, has <a
href="http://www.lechuguinos.com/laidy-gomez-no-quiere-intervencionismo/">rejected</a>
Guaidó’s support of intervention by the US, warning
that it “would generate death of Venezuelans.”</p>
<p>The Guaidó/Trump cabal does not reflect the
democratic consensus in Venezuela, where polls
consistently show super majorities <a
href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/venezuelans-oppose-intervention-us-sanctions-poll/">oppose
outside intervention</a>. Popular opinion in
Venezuela supports negotiations between the government
and the opposition as proposed by Mexico, Uruguay, and
the Vatican. The Maduro administration has embraced
the negotiations as a peaceful solution to the crisis
facing Venezuela.</p>
<p>The US government <a
href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/time-for-action-pence-whips-up-venezuelan-crowd-in-doral-pledges-continued-support/ar-BBT4fDk">rejects
a negotiated solution</a>, in the words of Vice
President Pence: “This is no time for dialogue; this
is time for action.” This intransigent position is
faithfully echoed by Guaidó. So while most Venezuelans
want peace, the self-appointed president, backed by
the full force of US military power, wrote in a <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/opinion/juan-guaido-venezuela.html">New
York Times</a> op-ed that it was possible to “end
the Maduro regime with a minimum of bloodshed.”</p>
<p>The Guaidó/Trump cabal’s fig leaf for legitimacy is
based on the <a
href="https://www.laiguana.tv/articulos/428481-maduro-legitimo-baltazar-garzon/">bogus
argument</a> that Article 233 of the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution">Venezuelan
constitution</a> gives the National Assembly the
power to declare a national president’s “abandonment”
of the office. In which case, the president of the
National Assembly can serve as an interim national
president, until presidential elections are held. The
inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no
inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution
says no such thing.</p>
<p>In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are
very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution/title/5">Article
233</a> of the Venezuelan constitution and do not
include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is
what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted
logic of the US government and its epigones, if the
people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the
election is by definition fraudulent and the
democratically elected winner is <em>ipso facto </em>a
dictator.</p>
<p>The function of adjudicating the validity of an
election, as in any country, is to be dealt with
through court challenges, not by turning to Donald
Trump for his approval. And certainly not by anointing
an individual from a party that could have run in the
2018 election but decided to boycott.</p>
<p>The National Electoral Council (CNE), Venezuela’s
separate electoral branch, has certified Maduro’s
reelection, as have independent international
observers. A transparent and redundant auditing
process of the vote had been conducted at each polling
station and all party representatives – including
opposition ones – signed off on the validity of the
process when the polls closed. Further, no appeal was
filed by any of the boycotting parties.</p>
<p>Maduro was sworn into office under constitutional
Article 231 before the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14211">Supreme
Tribunal of Justice</a> (TSJ), which is the separate
high court branch of the Venezuelan government. The
TSJ had previously found the National Assembly to be
in judicial contempt under Article 336:7, because the
assembly had sworn in three deputies temporarily
suspended because of voting irregularities.</p>
<p>The far-right opposition has boycotted the high court
as well as the electoral process. They contest the
legitimacy of the TSJ because some members of the TSJ
were appointed by a lame duck National Assembly
favorable to Maduro, after a new National Assembly
with a majority in opposition had been elected in
December 2015 but not yet seated.</p>
<p>Even if President Maduro were somehow deemed to have
experienced what is termed a <em>falta absoluta </em>(i.e.,
some sort of void in the presidency due to death,
insanity, absence, etc.), the National Assembly
president is only authorized to take over if the <em>falta
absoluta</em> occurs before the lawful president
"takes possession." However, Maduro was already "in
possession” before the January 10, 2019 presidential
inauguration and even before the May 10, 2018
presidential election. Maduro had won the presidency
in the 2013 election and ran and won reelection last
May.</p>
<p>If the <em>falta absoluta</em> is deemed to have
occurred during the first four years of the
presidential term, the vice president takes over. Then
the constitution decrees that a snap election for the
presidency must be held within 30 days. This is what
happened when President Hugo Chávez died while in
office in 2013. Then Vice President Nicolás Maduro
succeeded to the presidency, called for new elections,
and was elected by the people of Venezuela.</p>
<p>If it is deemed that the <em>falta absoluta</em>
occurred during the last two years of the six-year
presidential term, the vice president serves until the
end of the term, according to the Venezuelan
constitution. And if the time of the alleged <em>falta
absoluta</em> is unclear – when Maduro presided over
“illegitimate” elections in 2018, as is claimed by the
far-right opposition – it is up to the TSJ to decide,
not the head of the National Assembly or even such an
august authority as US Senator Marco Rubio. Or the
craven US press (too numerous to cite), which without
bothering to read the plain language of the Bolivarian
Constitution, repeatedly refers to Guaidó as the
“constitutionally authorized” or “legitimate”
president.</p>
<p>As <a
href="https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/former-u-n-expert-the-u-s-is-violating-international-law-by-attempting-a-coup-in-venezuela/">Alfred
de Zayas</a>, United Nations independent expert on
the promotion of a democratic and equitable
international order, tweeted: “Article 233 of the
Venezuelan constitution is inapplicable and cannot be
twisted into legitimizing Guaidó’s self-proclamation
as interim President. A <a
href="https://twitter.com/Alfreddezayas/status/1093061037086203904">coup
is a coup</a>.”</p>
<p><em>Roger Harris with the <a
href="http://taskforceamericas.org/">Task Force on
the Americas</a> and the <a
href="https://afgj.org/focus-areas/venezuela-solidarity-campaign/campaign-to-end-us-and-canada-sanctions-against-venezuela">Campaign
to End US/Canada Sanctions Against Venezuela</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.</em></p>
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