Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guaidó gave a qua­si-state of the na­tion ad­dress Fri­day, of­fer­ing a broad ac­count­ing of mil­lions of dol­lars un­der his con­trol and tak­ing cred­it for so­cial pro­grams ben­e­fit­ing peo­ple across the trou­bled South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Guaidó said the par­al­lel gov­ern­ment he es­tab­lished three years ago has spent at least $130 mil­lion, with about $70 mil­lion go­ing to so­cial pro­grams in­clud­ing as­sis­tance for on­col­o­gy and oth­er health treat­ments. While he pre­sent­ed a bal­ance, his ad­dress ap­peared to dou­ble as a cam­paign speech from a can­di­date seek­ing an­oth­er chance from dis­ap­point­ed con­stituents and at­tack­ing an op­po­nent.

“To­day, the first thing I must say, what I am say­ing in this bal­ance sheet, is that we owe a debt to Venezue­lans, and I must say even to the re­gion, in this fight for democ­ra­cy,” Guaidó said to those gath­ered in a meet­ing room in Cara­cas, which in­clud­ed diplo­mats from Ger­many, France and the Nether­lands.

The event was framed as an ex­er­cise in democ­ra­cy to be con­trast­ed with the se­cre­cy that shrouds the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, whom Guaidó had promised to top­ple with the help of al­lies but has failed to do so. The meet­ing room that host­ed the event was dec­o­rat­ed with en­larged pho­tos of him walk­ing at the White House with for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and en­gag­ing in con­ver­sa­tions with French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, Prime Min­is­ter of Cana­da Justin Trudeau and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights Michelle Bachelet.

Guaidó, 39, de­clared him­self Venezuela’s in­ter­im pres­i­dent in Jan­u­ary 2019, ar­gu­ing that in his ca­pac­i­ty as then-pres­i­dent of the coun­try’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly the con­sti­tu­tion al­lowed him to form a tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment be­cause Maduro had been re-elect­ed in a sham vote in late 2018. Dozens of coun­tries, in­clud­ing the U.S., Cana­da and Colom­bia, sup­port­ed Guaidó’s move and be­gan rec­og­niz­ing him as Venezuela’s le­git­i­mate leader.

Un­der Trump, the U.S. ramped up eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Venezuela and grant­ed Guaidó au­thor­i­ty to take con­trol of bank ac­counts that Maduro’s gov­ern­ment has in the Fed­er­al Re­serve Bank of New York or any oth­er U.S.-in­sured banks.

An ac­count at the Fed­er­al Re­serve Bank of New York held $342 mil­lion that stemmed from a pay­out seized by the U.S. gov­ern­ment from a gold-for-loans deal in 2015 that Maduro de­fault­ed on with the Bank of Eng­land.

Guaidó said his gov­ern­ment spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $60.2 mil­lion in 2020 and about $70 mil­lion in 2021. The funds were drawn from a bud­get of about $242 mil­lion cleared for dis­burse­ment by the Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol of the U.S. De­part­ment of Trea­sury.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $19 mil­lion went to rough­ly 61,000 health care work­ers who re­ceived three $100 pay­ments at the height of the pan­dem­ic, when the coun­try’s month­ly min­i­mum wage, which many earned, was about $2.

In 2020, about $8.5 mil­lion was spent by the par­al­lel con­gress. That num­ber dropped to about $7.4 mil­lion the fol­low­ing year.

As he ex­plained the bud­get and ex­pens­es, he al­so is­sued a warn­ing to Venezuela’s cred­i­tors, telling them that their lob­by­ing ef­forts fo­cused on get­ting the U.S. to lift eco­nom­ic sanc­tions is not the ap­pro­pri­ate route to re­coup their mon­ey.

“A mes­sage to the cred­i­tors with whom Venezuela has debts to­day: Look, there are not that many as­sets in Venezuela to be able to pay all those debts. That is the truth. At the cur­rent rate of pro­duc­tion it would be years,” Guaidó said. “The best way to re­turn to rene­go­ti­ate health­ily with Venezuela, with le­gal cer­tain­ty ... is once again democ­ra­cy in Venezuela.”

Guaidó said the par­al­lel gov­ern­ment has faced more than 200 le­gal dis­putes be­tween tri­als and ar­bi­tra­tion in which $41 bil­lion are at stake.

Many of the im­ages that ac­com­pa­nied his pre­sen­ta­tion showed streets full of peo­ple whom he once man­aged to draw out to protest against Maduro. But sup­port for Guaidó has de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The speech Fri­day came as he con­tin­ues to pro­mote the use of a pri­ma­ry elec­tion to de­ter­mine which op­po­si­tion can­di­date will face off Maduro in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that should take place in 2024.

Source: As­so­ci­at­ed Press