LIMA, Peru (AP):
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was not invited to a summit of Western Hemisphere leaders in June. But by October, he travelled to Egypt for a conference where he joked with French President Emmanuel Macron and shook hands with John Kerry, the US government’s climate envoy.
The encounters, with a towering Maduro graciously smiling throughout, were carefully captured on video, posted on social media and broadcast on Venezuela’s state television.
A few months short of a decade since he inherited the country’s leadership upon the death of President Hugo Chávez, Maduro is working to regain the international recognition he lost when his 2018 re-election was deemed a sham by dozens of nations.
Those efforts are also aimed at bolstering his strength at home as he enters 2023 while pressure mounts for a free and fair presidential election the following year.
Crucial to Maduro’s calculations are his country’s top asset – oil – and the war in Ukraine. The South American country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but it has not supplied the West’s market since the US imposed crippling economic sanctions as democracy and human rights deteriorated after Maduro’s re-election.
The international community wants “some kind of contribution to global energy security, and with Russian oil off the market, Venezuelan oil becomes attractive again,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Maduro’s attempt to clean up his image comes as many of the conditions that turned him into an international pariah remain unchanged.
Independent experts working with the UN’s top human rights body have documented a systemic attack on government opponents, journalists and others. Their report in September alleged Maduro personally ordered the detention of government opponents, who endured electric shocks, asphyxiation and other cruel acts while in custody.
An economic crisis that began during Chávez’s last months in office has only worsened during Maduro’s presidency. It has driven roughly seven million Venezuelans to leave the country, made the local currency worthless and pushed millions into poverty.
Under Maduro, who succeeded Chavez in 2013, about three-quarters of the population lives on less than US$1.90 a day – the international benchmark of extreme poverty. Power outages are part of everyday life, and water supply is severely restricted.
“He’s trying to project an image of strength, but the reality is that he’s just incredibly thirsty right now for international attention,” said Geoff Ramsey, director of Venezuela research at the US-based Washington Office on Latin America think tank. “We saw this from Cairo, where he was ambushing world leaders and then projecting these hallway encounters as if they were official state visits.”