Delcy Rodríguez to be sworn in as president of Venezuela

The former Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, will be sworn in as president today in Caracas, at 08:00 local time (12:00 GMT).

Rodríguez has been acting as interim president of Venezuela since Saturday, when Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured by US military personnel.

Following his removal from the country, Rodríguez denounced Maduro’s detention as a kidnapping and stressed that Venezuela would not become a colony of the US.

The former vice president was also the minister for oil in Venezuela, which is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

She’s already secured the support all judicial and political institutions within the South American nation, as well as the Venezuelan army.

Speaking to US news outlet The Atlantic earlier today, US President Donald Trump has already threatened action against Rodríguez.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he told the magazine.

Meanwhile, John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser in his first term before becoming a prominent critic of the president, tells the BBC that overthrowing Maduro was the right thing to do.

“It’s what we tried to do in 2018 and 2019 unsuccessfully. [Now], we’ve extracted Maduro, but we haven’t overturned the regime.”

Bolton says he thinks it’s highly unlikely that Delcy Rodriguez, the newly sworn-in acting president in Caracas, will “bend the knee to the United States”. But he acknowledges that the massive US military presence off Venezuela gives Trump leverage.

“The rational thing to do here is bring down what’s left of the Maduro regime and put the opposition in power pending free and fair elections. They have people capable of running an interim administration while elections are set up.”

President Trump ruled that out at his Mar-a-Lago press conference, saying Nobel winner Maria Corino Machado didn’t have the “support or respect” to lead the country.

Bolton says when he was working in the White House, a lot of planning was done on the “day after” scenario for Venezuela’s economy. According to Bolton, the planning at the time was to reintegrate Venezuela into the global economy, in part by unfreezing Venezuelan assets in the US and having EU countries do the same.

He thinks there’s one key thing to watch out for in the coming days. “The big question is what will Russia, Cuba, China and Iran do to prop up the regime.”

COURTESY: BBC