Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez calls for ‘balanced and respectful’ relationship with US

MEXICO CITY: Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez on Sunday (Jan 4) called for a "balanced and respectful" relationship with the United States, a day after American forces attacked Caracas and captured leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.

"We consider it a priority to move toward a balanced and respectful relationship between the US and Venezuela," Rodriguez, Maduro's vice president, wrote on Telegram.

"We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on an agenda for cooperation that is aimed toward shared development."

Her latest comments were a shift from earlier remarks on Saturday, after Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president. 

In a televised address then, Rodriguez gave no indication that she would cooperate with Trump, referring to his government as “extremists".

“The only president of Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro,” Rodriguez said, surrounded by high-ranking civilian officials and military leaders. “What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law."

Rodriguez has served as Maduro's vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and its feared intelligence service. She was next in the presidential line of succession.

AT ODDS WITH TRUMP

Rodriguez, a 56-year-old lawyer and politician has had a lengthy career representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chavez on the world stage.

Her rise to become interim leader of the South American country came as a surprise on Saturday morning, when Trump announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been in communication with Rodriguez and that the Venezuelan leader was “gracious” and would work with the American government. Rubio said Rodriguez was someone the administration could work with, unlike Maduro.

In doing so, observers said the government was effectively turning its back on the opposition movement it maintained was the winner of Venezuela's 2024 elections just weeks before.

On Sunday, Trump’s tone shifted as Rodriguez and other Venezuelan officials continued to rail against the Trump administration and assert that they were in control of the country.

"If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro," Trump said of Rodriguez in an interview with The Atlantic.

In comments later Sunday night, Trump said Rodriguez is “cooperating".

He added that he wanted her to provide “total access”, from oil facilities to basic infrastructure like roads, so they can be rebuilt. But Trump also reiterated his threat that she could “face a situation probably worse than Maduro” if she doesn’t cooperate with the US.

Asked as he flew on Air Force One back from Florida to Washington about Rodriguez’s comments in which she said she stands by Maduro, Trump said, “I don’t think it’s pushback”, noting that “you hear a different person than I hear". When a reporter told Trump that Rodriguez had called the operation a kidnapping of Maduro, Trump responded, “It’s all right, it’s not a bad term”.

But Trump's comments followed Rubio having asserted in TV interviews on Sunday that he didn't see Rodriguez and her government as "legitimate” because he said the country never held free and fair elections.

RISE TO INTERIM PRESIDENT

A lawyer educated in Britain and France, the interim president and her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have sterling leftist credentials born from tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who was arrested for his involvement in the kidnapping of American business owner William Niehous in 1976, and later died in police custody.

Unlike many in Maduro’s inner circle, the Rodriguez siblings have avoided criminal indictment in the US, though the interim president did face US sanctions during Trump's first term for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.

Rodriguez held a number of lower-level positions under Chavez's government, but gained prominence working under Maduro to the point of being seen as his successor. She served the economic minister, foreign affairs minister, petroleum minister and others help stabilise Venezuela's endemically crisis-stricken economy after years of rampant inflation and turmoil.

Rodriguez developed strong ties with Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who baulked at the notion of US-led regime change. The interim president also presided over an assembly promoted by Maduro in response to street protests in 2017 meant to neutralise the opposition-majority legislature.

She enjoys a close relationship with the military, which has long acted as the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela, said Ronal Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Venezuela Observatory of Rosario University in Bogota, Colombia.

“She has a very particular relationship with power,” he said. “She has developed very strong ties with elements of the armed forces and has managed to establish lines of dialogue with them, largely on a transactional basis.”

FUTURE IN POWER

It's unclear how long Rodriguez will hold power, or how closely she will work with the Trump administration.

Geoff Ramsey, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institute, said Rodriguez's firm tone with the Trump administration may be an attempt to “save face”. Others have noted that Maduro's capture required some level of collaboration within the Venezuelan government.

“She can’t exactly expect to score points with her revolutionary peers if she presents herself as a patsy for US interests," Ramsey said.

Venezuela’s constitution requires an election within 30 days whenever the president becomes “permanently unavailable” to serve. Reasons listed include death, resignation, removal from office or “abandonment” of duties as declared by the National Assembly.

That electoral timeline was rigorously followed when Maduro’s predecessor, Chavez, died of cancer in 2013. However, the loyalist Supreme Court, in its decision Saturday, cited another provision of the charter in declaring Maduro’s absence a “temporary” one.

In such a scenario, there is no election requirement. Instead, the vice president, an unelected position, takes over for up to 90 days - a period that can be extended to six months with a vote of the National Assembly.

In handing temporary power to Rodriguez, the Supreme Court made no mention of the 180-day time limit, leading some to speculate she could try to remain in power even longer as she seeks to unite the disparate factions of the ruling socialist party while shielding it from what would certainly be a stiff electoral challenge.