President Biden, speak out on Venezuela. It’s too important to leave to underlings | Opinion

President Biden deserves credit for doing a good job handling the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s time for him to raise his voice on Venezuela. And he needs to do that personally, rather than continuing to delegate that task to underlings.

In recent days, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has stepped up his repression of leading Venezuelan civic leaders, in violation of a Norway-brokered agreement with the opposition signed in Barbados in October to hold credible elections this year.

On Feb. 9, less than three weeks after banning leading opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for office, the Maduro regime arrested prominent military expert and human rights leader Rocío San Miguel and five of her relatives. She is the head of the Control Ciudadano, a non-government group that advocates for civic oversight of Venezuela’s armed forces.

San Miguel was accused by Maduro’s rubber-stamp prosecutor general’s office of being involved in an alleged plot to kill the president. That’s often a bogus claim used by Venezuela’s regime to round up political opponents.

Maduro’s latest escalation of political repression, as well as his on-and-off threats to invade neighboring Guyana, may be a symptom of political weakness. The Venezuelan dictator had vowed to hold elections this year, as demanded by the Constitution, but has yet to set a date for the vote. Independent polls say he would lose a free and fair election.

If Maduro were as popular as he claims, he would not need to ban Machado and other leading opposition candidates, nor prohibit Venezuelan media from interviewing them. He’s clearly scared of losing the election.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Maduro’s latest escalation of repression is aimed at raising political tensions, and fabricating a state of emergency to cancel the election.

Which brings me back to Biden, and to what the U.S. government should do.

The Biden administration announced recently that it was reinstating U.S. mining sanctions on Venezuela and — more importantly — that it would reimpose U.S. oil sanctions on Venezuela in April unless Maduro lifts his ban on Machado and other opposition candidates.

But the Biden administration’s announcement wasn’t made by the president, nor by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but by State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller and White House spokesperson John Kirby.

In fact, neither Biden nor Blinken have made statements about Venezuela since Dec. 20, several weeks before Maduro’s ban on Machado’s candidacy and the arrests of San Miguel and her relatives, according to the State Department’s and White House web pages.

If the Biden administration wants Maduro to take U.S. threats of further sanctions seriously, the message has to come from the U.S. president himself.

“There is nothing more powerful than the presidential voice. When the president speaks, people listen,” Eric Farnsworth, a Latin American expert with the Americas’ Society and former State Department official, told me. “It’s clear that Maduro is not going to react unless U.S. intentions are made clear from the very top.”

Biden’s failure to personally speak about Venezuela also has a ripple effect abroad. If the U.S. president doesn’t play an active role in demanding free elections in Venezuela, there is little incentive for less powerful democracies to do so.

Granted, Biden is dealing with international crises in the Middle East, Ukraine and Taiwan, among others. And Biden is facing a tough election race at home, where former President Trump, a friend of dictators who tried to steal the 2020 election after losing it, is leading in some polls.

But Venezuela is a U.S. national interest issue. It’s a source of political destabilization in Latin America, and a humanitarian tragedy that has driven nearly 8 million people to flee from that country. More than 640,000 of them have come to the United States, which has helped turn illegal immigration into the No. 1 election issue in the country.

Biden must urgently make a forceful statement about the restoration of democracy in Venezuela, and he must do it now, before the Venezuelan crisis escalates further.

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