By Andreína Chávez Alava on November 20, 2024 from Caracas
U.S. Congress, photo: Bill Hackwell
The Venezuelan government has strongly condemned the BOLIVAR Act, a new bipartisan legislation approved by the US House of Representatives aimed at tightening economic sanctions against the country.
“The purpose of this law is to undermine economic ties and cooperation between Venezuela and the United States, which blatantly violates the United Nations Charter, adding to the more than 930 unilateral and extraterritorial coercive measures imposed against the Venezuelan people,” stated a communique from Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Caracas accused Venezuelan far-right factions of backing Washington’s aggression against the country and called on the international community to denounce this “illegal” measure that “violates national sovereignty” and is “doomed to fail.”
Additionally, the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Office criticized the “offensive” legislation acronym, named after Venezuelan and South American independence hero Simón Bolívar.
The “Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime (BOLIVAR) Act” was passed on Monday by the US House of Representatives with bipartisan support from both Republican and Democratic legislators. It was introduced by Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and will now move to the US Senate.
Waltz, picked as a national security advisor for the incoming Trump administration, stated in a press release that the bill “sends a powerful message to Maduro that there will be no appeasement.”
On Tuesday, US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) held a phone conversation with Venezuelan far-right leader María Corina Machado and said that President Nicolás Maduro’s “days are numbered.” Writing on X, Scott stated that he would “keep fighting” to overthrow the Venezuelan government, signaling the upper chamber’s favorable stance on the BOLIVAR Act.
The HR 825 bill will prohibit US federal agencies from contracting “the procurement of goods or services with any person that engages in significant business operations” with the Maduro government or any successor that is not recognized as “legitimate” by the White House.
Nevertheless, contractors that have secured sanctions waivers from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to operate in Venezuela will remain exempted from repercussions. Currently, a handful of US and European oil companies have licenses to deal with the Venezuelan energy sector.
In practice, the BOLIVAR Act does not translate into new restrictions against Venezuela or worsen the existing sanctions. Executive Order 13884 issued by the Trump government in August 2019 already prohibits “US persons from engaging in transactions with the Maduro government unless authorized by OFAC.” However, it seeks to codify measures imposed via executive orders into legislation.
Since the 2015 Obama decree declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security, Democrat and Republican administrations have levied successive waves of wide-reaching sanctions against virtually all sectors of the Venezuelan economy. The oil industry has been relentlessly targeted with financial sanctions, an export embargo, secondary sanctions and other measures aimed at choking off revenue.
The sanctions program has been classified as “collective punishment” by independent human rights experts for inducing a migration wave and economic struggles that led to the death of tens of thousands of Venezuelans.
In response to the bipartisan US legislation, Venezuelan National Assembly (AN) President Jorge Rodríguez called the BOLIVAR act a “monstrosity” aimed at offending the Venezuelan people’s identity and perpetuating “the most aggressive actions” against the Latin American nation.
“Sanctions are crimes against humanity because they aim at the extermination of freedom, mainly economic freedom,” Rodríguez said during a legislative session on Tuesday. “They [the US government and local allies] have made a mistake again, and we will defeat them once more.”
Rodríguez proposed a “Special Law of Liberator Simón Bolívar against the Blockade and for the Defense of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” which would permanently bar politicians who have advocated for US sanctions from holding office.
The US-backed Venezuelan opposition has long endorsed the US’ regime change agenda, including unilateral coercive measures, with 57-year-old María Corina Machado among those who have repeatedly lobbied for sanctions as well as military intervention.
Machado’s transgressions led to the Venezuelan Supreme Court upholding a ban on her holding public office. She then named 75-year-old virtually unknown diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia as her replacement for the July 28 presidential vote.
According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), President Maduro received 6.4 million votes, while the US-backed candidate garnered 5.3 million. The Supreme Court later validated the results, with Maduro’s third term set to begin on January 10. However, the opposition has continued to assert that González, who self-exiled in Spain in September, was the winner.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to González as “president-elect,” four months after the election. Previously, Washington had expressed support for the opposition’s victory claim but refrained from full acknowledgment.
“The Venezuelan people spoke resoundingly on July 28 and made Edmundo the president-elect. Democracy demands respect for the will of the voters,” stated Blinken on his X account. No official communique has been issued.
Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Minister Yván Gil slammed Blinken for repeating the failed 2019 strategy when Washington threw its weight behind self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaidó, who fled to the US in early 2023 after failing to take power.
“Another literary plan of yet another state secretary who sank, along with his puppets, trying to overturn Venezuelan democracy,” Gil wrote on his Telegram channel.
The soon-to-be-inaugurated Trump administration has not yet taken a position on González’s recognition. But Trump’s choosing of Republican Senator Marco Rubio—an outspoken foreign policy hardliner—for secretary of state, has led analysts to predict intensified regime change efforts.
Source: Venezuela Analysis