Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Act­ing Pres­i­dent of Venezuela Del­cy Ro­dríguez has made it clear that Nicolás Maduro is the on­ly pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Yes­ter­day, Ro­dríguez, along with oth­er se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, held a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al De­fence Coun­cil in re­sponse to the mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.

“We de­mand the im­me­di­ate re­lease of Nico­las Maduro and his wife. There is on­ly one pres­i­dent in this coun­try, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Mo­ros,” she de­clared.

The Unit­ed States forces con­duct­ed a night­time mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion, which led to the cap­ture of Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res.

The op­er­a­tion, which oc­curred around 2 am, saw sev­en pow­er­ful ex­plo­sions and low-fly­ing air­craft in Cara­cas.

Ro­driguez al­so called the US ac­tions against Venezuela “bar­bar­ic” and de­clared a state of emer­gency.

“We are an­nounc­ing the State of Emer­gency signed by Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro. It has been sub­mit­ted to the Ju­di­cia­ry, to the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Cham­ber, for the cor­re­spond­ing pro­ce­dure. We are pro­ceed­ing with­in the frame­work of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” she re­port­ed.

She claimed that the ex­trem­ists who have pro­mot­ed, what she called, an armed ag­gres­sion against Venezuela, will be held ac­count­able by his­to­ry and jus­tice.

“Of that we have no doubt. The Venezue­lan peo­ple have al­ready rel­e­gat­ed them to their right­ful place, in the dust­bin of his­to­ry, and the con­scious Venezue­lan peo­ple, with their sa­cred fire of pa­tri­o­tism burn­ing bright­ly, are out­raged by the il­le­gal and il­le­git­i­mate kid­nap­ping of the pres­i­dent and the First La­dy, the First Com­bat­ant Cil­ia Flo­res. All of Venezuela is mo­bilised, and the de­cree al­ready signed by Pres­i­dent Maduro, the sole pres­i­dent of Venezuela, will be en­forced.”

Protests in sup­port of Maduro

Af­ter US mil­i­tary strikes in Venezuela ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing and the cap­ture of Maduro, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment seemed to be in con­trol, with thou­sands of sup­port­ers tak­ing to the streets, crit­i­cis­ing the at­tacks.

Ro­dríguez re­mained in Venezuela and as­sumed the po­si­tion of act­ing Pres­i­dent with the sup­port of the Unit­ed States.

But speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er yes­ter­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Ro­driguez was sworn in as Pres­i­dent.

He al­so said the US was “go­ing to run Venezuela” fol­low­ing Maduro’s cap­ture, un­til such time as a safe, prop­er and ju­di­cious tran­si­tion can take place.”

Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo re­leased a video telling the Venezue­lan peo­ple to de­fend the con­sti­tu­tion but to “re­main calm.”

Al­though there were march­es in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment, they were most­ly peace­ful.

The broth­er of for­mer pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez, Adán Chávez, led march­es in Chávez’s birth­place of Bari­nas, con­demn­ing US strikes and the “kid­nap­ping” of Maduro.

“The peo­ple of Bari­nas are in the streets, not on­ly to re­ject these acts of in­ter­fer­ence, but to de­mand that the pop­u­lar will be re­spect­ed and that the in­tegri­ty of the con­sti­tu­tion­al Pres­i­dent be guar­an­teed,” he said at a ral­ly.

Tu­cu­pi­ta is the cap­i­tal city of the Venezue­lan state of Delta Amacuro, which faces Ce­dros and the south west­ern part of Trinidad, and there was a large march there yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias, the Gov­er­nor’s of­fice en­cour­aged peo­ple to go out to work and to shop and car­ry on with their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties peace­ful­ly.

A Venezue­lan teacher from the Venezue­lan state of Lara, Je­sus Ro­jas and a sup­port­er of the gov­ern­ment told Guardian Me­dia by What­sApp that peo­ple in that re­gion were on the streets march­ing for Maduro’s re­turn, but in a peace­ful way.

“Ef­fec­tive­ly, Del­cy Ro­driguez is the Vice Pres­i­dent, and she’s in charge of the pres­i­den­cy right now un­til the whole sit­u­a­tion is back to nor­mal again.”

How it hap­pened

The US launched a wide-scale “air, land and sea” mil­i­tary at­tack on Venezuela ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing in­volv­ing at least 150 air­craft. Maduro and his wife were cap­tured and flown out of the coun­try.

Maduro was head­ed for New York, where he is ex­pect­ed to be charged and tried for drug traf­fick­ing.

At least sev­en ex­plo­sions were re­port­ed from Venezuela’s cap­i­tal, Cara­cas, around 2 am.

With­in min­utes of the ex­plo­sions, Maduro de­clared a state of emer­gency, say­ing the US had struck Cara­cas as well as the neigh­bour­ing states of Mi­ran­da, Aragua and La Guaira.

Sev­er­al mil­i­tary bases were struck through­out the coun­try, caus­ing fires and dam­age.

Venezue­lan At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Tarek William Saab con­demned the “at­tack” against civil­ians, who were left dead and wound­ed. How­ev­er, no ex­act de­tails have been giv­en as to how many peo­ple were killed.