Ke­jan Haynes

Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez said Nicolás Maduro re­mains the coun­try’s on­ly pres­i­dent, re­ject­ing US as­ser­tions of au­thor­i­ty af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Wash­ing­ton would “run” Venezuela fol­low­ing Maduro’s cap­ture.

“There is on­ly one pres­i­dent of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Mo­ro,” Ro­dríguez said dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing of the De­fence Coun­cil of the Na­tion, hours af­ter Trump out­lined the US po­si­tion dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton.

Ro­dríguez de­scribed the cap­ture of Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, as an “il­le­gal kid­nap­ping” and ac­cused the Unit­ed States of pur­su­ing regime change to gain con­trol of Venezuela’s oil, min­er­al and nat­ur­al re­sources. She said the op­er­a­tion vi­o­lat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al law and Ar­ti­cles 1 and 2 of the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter.

She an­nounced the ac­ti­va­tion of all branch­es of na­tion­al pow­er, in­clud­ing the armed forces, po­lice and civ­il au­thor­i­ties, and said a de­cree of “ex­ter­nal com­mo­tion” signed by Maduro would be sub­mit­ted to the Supreme Court for con­sti­tu­tion­al back­ing. Ro­dríguez urged Venezue­lans to re­main calm while mo­bilised in de­fence of sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty.

Trump, speak­ing ear­li­er, said the Unit­ed States would not with­draw af­ter cap­tur­ing Maduro, ar­gu­ing Venezuela had “ze­ro chance” of re­cov­ery if Wash­ing­ton stepped aside.

“We’re not go­ing to just do this with Maduro and then leave like every­body else, leave and say, ‘Let it go to hell,’” Trump said. “If we just left, it has ze­ro chance of ever com­ing back. We’ll run it prop­er­ly. We’ll run it pro­fes­sion­al­ly.”

Trump said there was no le­git­i­mate au­thor­i­ty ca­pa­ble of gov­ern­ing Venezuela in­de­pen­dent­ly, re­fer­ring to Ro­dríguez, who he said had been ap­point­ed by Maduro and sworn in ear­li­er in the day. He said she had spo­ken with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and in­di­cat­ed co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton.

“She was quite gra­cious, but she re­al­ly doesn’t have a choice,” Trump said.

He added the US planned to bring in ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies to in­vest heav­i­ly in Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor. “We’ll have the great­est oil com­pa­nies in the world go in and in­vest bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars,” he said.

Ro­dríguez re­ject­ed those claims, say­ing Venezuela would nev­er ac­cept for­eign con­trol and ac­cus­ing Wash­ing­ton of at­tempt­ing to reim­pose colo­nial rule. She said Venezuela would seek in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port and in­sist­ed any fu­ture re­la­tions must be based on re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal­i­ty.

“We will nev­er be colonies again of any em­pire,” Ro­dríguez said, call­ing for na­tion­al uni­ty as the cri­sis un­folds.