President Trump is imposing travel bans on individuals who populate the alternate legislature that Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro established to sideline opposition leaders.
“This body has usurped many of the constitutional powers of the national assembly — the legitimate national assembly — and embodies Maduro’s destruction of democratic institutions,” Elliott Abrams, the new U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, told the State Department press corps Thursday.
The announcement is a welcome intensification of pressure on the Maduro regime, according to regional officials. Maduro established the National Constituent Assembly through a referendum that was boycotted by the opposition, with the goal of rewriting the Venezuelan Constitution to disempower the established legislature, the only branch of government controlled by his domestic opponent.
“It’s good news,” said a senior official at the Organization of American States, the international body focused on the Western Hemisphere, which has played a leading role in the condemnation of Maduro’s regime. “The international community needs to increase the pressure. Maduro and his henchmen must realize that their time is up.”
Maduro’s effort to establish the National Constituent Assembly provoked President Trump to call him a “bad leader” and threaten the imposition of sanctions in July 2017. Abrams’ announcement isn’t as forceful as an expulsion of Maduro loyalists credentialed as diplomats in the United States, but that could soon follow.
“It’s tightening the grip progressively,” the senior OAS official said. “You maximize the effect — everyday there’s something — and you have more margin for maneuvering.”
The matter of visa restrictions is connected to the larger issue of legitimacy in Venezuela. Interim President Juan Guaido’s claim to authority derives from his status as head of the National Assembly, which makes him first in the line of succession when there is no legitimate president. In declaring the illegitimacy of the rival legislature with its visa bans, the State Department is further affirming Guaido’s claim.
The visas of diplomats at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., could be revoked by the same logic because the authority to designate an ambassador, under international law, rests with the head of state.
“There is only one president of Venezuela, and there is a former president of Venezuela,” Abrams declared Thursday.
[Read more: Trump administration sanctions Venezuela’s state-run oil company]
