Guaido short on time and money to turn Venezuela

The clock is ticking on Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido amid signs that the White House is losing faith in his ability to execute a political transition before he may be forced to pass the baton.

Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly who invoked Venezuela's constitution on 23 January to declare his interim presidency, has been operating on a shoestring budget since launching what looks like an increasingly quixotic quest to oust President Nicolas Maduro, multiple Venezuelan and foreign officials tell Argus. Some members of the young leader's team inside and outside Venezuela are now growing frustrated.

"No one has been paid for weeks," one of Guaido's economic advisers says.

A few of Guaido's senior economic and diplomatic appointments outside Venezuela, such as Inter-American Development Bank representative, former Venezuelan planning minister and prominent Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann and diplomatic envoys such as Maria Faria in Costa Rica, are seen as having sufficient professional and personal means to allow them to work for the cause on a pro bono basis.

But many others are struggling to make ends meet. These include Venezuelans who were forced into exile and opposition legislators on the ground who no longer have a salary or access to employment and bank loans.

Washington is not footing their bills. A controversial US government decision this month to shift more than $40mn in USAID funds from Central American countries to the Guaido-led opposition is earmarked mainly for administrative support and logistics that will be strictly supervised. And Washington is not allowing access to Venezuelan assets frozen by US sanctions, a senior US government official told Argus privately yesterday.

"Guaido is running out of time and money," the official said. "The Trump administration, contrary to popular belief, is not supporting Guaido's transition government financially."

Guaido "has made mistakes, starting with what in retrospect was an unwise decision" to declare himself interim president, the official said, adding that the move was reminiscent of a failed coup attempt led by then-business leader Pedro Carmona in April 2002. At the time, Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez was forced to resign, only to return to power four days later after Carmona was denounced for leading a coup against a democratically elected president, the US official added. Carmona is now in exile.

The US official´s remarks run counter to widespread perceptions that Washington had groomed Guaido for the role, a view reinforced by the White House´s swift recognition of his authority in January.

Six months later, the Trump administration is not opening its purse for the opposition because it fears the funds would be mismanaged, if not stolen. "Venezuelan politicians have a long history of dipping into government funds for personal gain," the official added.

Guaido has not been accused of theft or mismanagement. But besides personal fortunes and donations from the diaspora, the sources for the Guaido administration´s modest funding are unclear. There is concern in Venezuela and abroad that some of the money is coming from unscrupulous sources, which would risk compromising the integrity of the movement down the road.

The till is running low at the same time that Guaido's window for political action may be closing. Low-profile negotiations underway in Barbados have raised the possibility of new presidential elections in April 2020, but Maduro is rebuffing the opposition´s demand for his immediate departure. If a deal in the Norwegian-mediated talks is not hammered out, Guaido may be forced to cede his leadership in the opposition-controlled legislature to another party in the opposition coalition.

Under a power-sharing agreement between the main opposition parties in the National Assembly, Guaido's Voluntad Popular party (VP) would come under pressure to pass the presidency of the body to another political party at the end of December. Accion Democratica (AD), a traditional leftist party that governed Venezuela when the oil industry was nationalized in the 1970s, would be next in line to succeed VP as head of the assembly.

If this happens, Guaido would lose his constitutional authority to serve as interim president in favor of whoever AD designates during the legislature's final year in session before new legislative elections are held in December 2020.

It is unclear whether the opposition coalition would agree to renew Guaido's assembly presidency for a second year, but some political jockeying and patronage in the exile government could play a role in the consensus decision, coalition sources tell Argus. Henry Ramos Allup, AD's titular leader and one of Guaido´s predecessors as assembly head, might be unwilling to relinquish his party's right to take back the helm of the legislature.

Guaido is running low on time and money as Washington is beginning to consider alternative strategies that are anathema to the hawkish wing of the opposition. This morning, the US government extended Chevron´s sanctions waiver to continue operating in Venezuela for another 90 days. And talk is growing of instituting an oil-for-aid program that would decouple efforts to break the political stalemate from the humanitarian crisis that critics say the sanctions are starting to aggravate. That idea, which could lead to a national unity government, is advocated by Henri Falcon, a presidential hopeful seen as accommodating to Maduro.