Venezuela arrests rogue soldiers after revolt
23 January, 2019
Venezuela’s government said on Monday it had suppressed a military revolt after a group of officers stole weapons and kidnapped several officials, as a video posted online showed a sergeant demanding the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.
Some two dozen officers attacked a National Guard outpost in the Caracas neighborhood of Cotiza, a kilometer from the presidential Miraflores palace, where they met “firm resistance,” the government said. Witnesses reported hearing gunshots at about 3 a.m.
Protesters later burned trash and a car outside the outpost, where the 25 officers were arrested, in a sign of growing tensions following Maduro’s inauguration to a second term that governments around the world have called illegitimate.
Though the incident signals discontent within the armed forces, it appeared to involve only low-ranking officers with little capacity to force change in the hyperinflationary economy as many people suffer from shortages of food and medicine.
“The armed forces categorically reject this type of action, which is most certainly motivated by the dark interests of the extreme right,” the government said in a statement read out on state television.
Maduro was inaugurated on Jan. 10 under an avalanche of criticism that his leadership was illegitimate following a 2018 election widely viewed as fraudulent, with countries around the world disavowing his government.
Opposition leaders and exiled dissidents have called on the armed forces to turn against Maduro, which the president has denounced as efforts to encourage a coup against him.
The opposition-controlled congress’s head, Juan Guaido, said the uprising was a sign of the armed forces’ discontent. Congress was committed to offering guarantees to officers who helped with “the Constitution’s reconstitution,” he said, though he did not want the military to fall into internal conflict.
“We want it to stand as one man on the side of the people, the Constitution, and against the usurpation,” he said on Twitter.
Venezuela’s pro-government Supreme Court ruled on Monday that it did not recognize Guaido as head of congress and declared that all the body’s actions were null and void.
Guaido, who was elected to head Congress on Jan. 5, has said he is willing to replace Maduro as interim president if he has the support of the military, with the aim of then calling free elections.
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