Maduro taps hardline loyalist to oversee police forces, prompting fears of deepening crackdown

Venezuelan President Maduro appoints hardline loyalist to oversee police forces amid ongoing crackdown on government opponents.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday (August 27, 2024) appointed a ruling socialist party boss to oversee the country’s police forces, empowering a hardline loyalist who has vowed to pursue government opponents as part of an ongoing crackdown that has alarmed human rights groups.

Mr. Maduro named Diosdado Cabello Interior Minister as part of a Cabinet shuffle following last month's contested presidential election.

Along with Mr. Maduro, Mr. Cabello is one of the most fervent stalwarts of the so-called Bolivarian revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez and has long been considered the second most powerful person in Venezuela after Mr. Maduro. A retired army lieutenant, he fought alongside Chávez in a failed military uprising in 1992 and later served as acting president when Chávez himself was removed in a brief coup a decade later.

However, Chávez passed him over when he picked Mr. Maduro — a civilian with no military pedigree — as his successor shortly before he died of cancer in 2013. Since then, he's served in a number of roles, including National Assembly president and head of the ruling socialist party. Until now, he never served in Mr. Maduro's Cabinet, an omission that has long fueled speculation of an unspoken rivalry between the two.

Human rights groups fear that Mr. Cabello's appointment to Interior Minister, with oversight of Venezuela's police forces, will intensify the government's heavy handed response to protests that erupted after last month's presidential election, when Mr. Maduro was declared the winner despite strong evidence presented by the opposition that its candidate prevailed by a 2-to-1 margin.

“If the new Cabinet is a bellwether of what Maduro intends to do, Cabello’s appointment is an indication of even more repression to come,” said Juanita Goebertus, director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch.

More than 2,000 people — including journalists, politicians and aid workers — have been arrested since the July 28 election. The wave of arrests is likely to feature prominently at a special meeting Wednesday of the Organization of American States in Washington to discuss a report on the crackdown by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.