Border Crisis between Venezuela and Colombia: Simply a Distraction?

In Venezuela, supermarket shelves are empty, hyperinflation runs rampant, and political prisoners sit behind bars, with no sign of President Nicolás Maduro’s government freeing them any time soon; yet, the Venezuelan opposition still holds an ounce of optimism for December 6. That day, parliamentary elections will be held with candidates that have been registered since the beginning of August.

According to major polls, the ruling coalition is losing ground due to the economic crisis that all Venezuelans are living, and the opposition’s chances for victory surpass those of the Socialist Party for the first time in 16 years. A majority in Congress could enable the opposition to pass a referendum to impeach Maduro and call for new presidential elections.

President Maduro and his ruling coalition are aware of the threat posed by an angry and revitalized opposition in the runup to the parliamentary elections. In response, the Socialist Party has enlisted its own candidates for all of the 167 seats in Congress, among which figures the First Lady of Venezuela, Cilia Flores. The Comptroller General’s Office also did its part in early August by barring major opposition leaders from holding any public office for a set period of time, all of whom were therefore disqualified from presenting their candidacy in the parliamentary elections.

Much of the political pressure building up in Venezuela seems to have burst towards its neighbors. President Maduro has ordered a border shutdown with Colombia under the justification that he is preventing violence on the border by crime gangs, whom he claims also traffic Venezuelan subsidized goods to Colombia.  He has also deported hundreds of Colombians without judicial hearing.

The border crisis with Colombia has led the opposition, notably ex-presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, to state that President Maduro is staging a conflict with the bordering country to distract from the economic situation in Venezuela and to avoid the elections in December. President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia has demanded respect for the deported Colombians’ human rights, and for their ability to retrieve their belongings, many of which now lie under demolished houses throughout Venezuela.

Capriles warns President Santos not to fall for Maduro’s “provocations,” which could lead to armed conflict between the two countries, a scenario which the Venezuelan opposition hopes can be avoided in a potential meeting between the two presidents.