“The pretender, Juan Guaido, is now finally gone. The myth that he was the president of Venezuela and had the capacity to speak and act for the country, has now evaporated”.

So writes veteran Caribbean diplomat, Sir Ronald Sanders, currently Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), and the United states in the St Lucian newspaper, the VOICE.

Guaido became a figurehead for the failed US attempts to undermine the legitimate authority of the government of Venezuela when he was endorsed by then US President Donald Trump and subsequently by the OAS and some Caribbean countries. He was even given the status of Head of state, and Venezuelan financial resources in the USA were put at his disposal. The governments of Jamaica, and the former administrations in Guyana and St Lucia had supported this farce.

But, Sir Ronald writes, the campaign to isolate the Maduro government in Venezuela, has not succeeded and, “four years later, Maduro is still there. Further,sanctions applied against the Maduro government did not succeed. The only thing that the sanctions accomplished was hurting the populace of the country, particularly the poor, creating the second largest flow of refugees in the world today”.

But in spite of the backing of the US government and the OAS, the farce of an unelected Guaido being President of a sovereign nation, could not be upheld, and with the change of governments in several states, the Guaido fallacy collapsed. It was only abstention by the three Caribbean governments mentioned which maintained the farce.

But, writes Sanders, the dangerous illusion was ended by the Venezuelan Opposition itself when it voted on December 30, 2022 to remove Juan Guaido.

The mask has now fallen off and “president Guaido” is no more, not even in the figment of his own imagination.