What will become of Nicolas Maduro? With a $50 million bounty on his head, the CIA openly active in Caracas and US forces mustering in the Caribbean, pundits and politicians throughout the Americas are opining on the Venezuelan president’s fate.
Some are counting on the United States deposing him, Saddam Hussein-style (or Salvador Allende-style, or Manuel Noriega-style). In the past two weeks, prominent neoconservatives Bret Stephens and Elliott Abrams have argued in favor of overthrowing Maduro outright in columns in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs.
Others wonder if Maduro might leave of his own volition. On Wednesday, the foreign minister of Colombia, Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy, suggested that Maduro’s negotiated exit from the presidency would be the “healthiest” option available.
“I believe he has indeed considered it, that there could be a way out, a transition, where he can leave without having to go to jail, and where someone can come in who can make that transition and where there can be legitimate elections,” Villavicencio Mapy told Bloomberg News. “It would be the healthiest thing to do.”
Soon after, Colombia’s leftist government clarified that the minister’s comment should not be construed as an endorsement of Maduro relinquishing power, emphasizing that Colombia has no interest in interfering “in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Continue reading the complete article on the original source
