Speaker 1: So I was in Europe at the time, and we
Speaker 1: got messages from my uncle who told us they heard
Speaker 1: the windows rattle, and they thought, my goodness, it's an earthquake.
Speaker 1: And then came the boom.
Speaker 2: At least seven explosions have been heard in the capital Caracas,
Speaker 2: accompanied by a number of low flying aircraft.
Speaker 1: At first they wondered, is this the military turning on
Speaker 1: the regime, because that's a scenario that many Venezuelans have
Speaker 1: wondered whether it might happen. But then came the sound
Speaker 1: of so many other explosions across the city, and then
Speaker 1: they realized that there was a massive, massive operation going on.
Speaker 3: This is Sandra, she's a Venezuelan journalist based abroad. We're
Speaker 3: not telling you her full name because her family back
Speaker 3: home are worried about revenge attacks.
Speaker 1: And then very quickly we got the post from Donald
Speaker 1: Trump on truth Social saying that Maduro had been captured.
Speaker 2: The former leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Madudo in handcuffs. You
Speaker 2: can see those blacked out sunglasses over his eyes. He
Speaker 2: is wearing the earmuffs as well. He looks to be
Speaker 2: in a tracksuit.
Speaker 1: It all happened so fast, No one could really grasp
Speaker 1: what was going on. But seeing Maduro wearing those headphones
Speaker 1: and that imask in that Nike tracksuit was so surreal.
Speaker 1: No one ever imagined that moment would come.
Speaker 4: This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful
Speaker 4: displays of American military might and competence in American history.
Speaker 3: Now, with Nicholas Maduro facing charges of Naco terrorism and
Speaker 3: drug trafficking in New York, Venezuela's future is uncertain.
Speaker 5: So we are going to run the country until such.
Speaker 4: Time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.
Speaker 3: The big questions who will really run the country and
Speaker 3: its oil industry, and what does Trump's intervention there mean
Speaker 3: for the rest of the world. I'm Nicole Johnston and
Speaker 3: you're listening to seven AM today Maduro's legacy and what
Speaker 3: comes next for Venezuela. It's Tuesday, January thirteenth. Sandra, you
Speaker 3: have friends and family in the capital, Caracas. What are
Speaker 3: they telling you about what's happening on the ground there.
Speaker 1: Well, I just got off the phone with a relative
Speaker 1: of mine who lives in Karrakaz, and she says things
Speaker 1: are bizarrely normal. People are going to work, there's no
Speaker 1: panic buying. Remember, the economy in Venezuela is in shambles
Speaker 1: and prices are really high for all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: so people can't actually afford to panic buy, and they
Speaker 1: can't afford not to work, So that's also contributing to
Speaker 1: some sense of normality. Having said that, there is also
Speaker 1: some tension in Gatacas, especially in the western part of
Speaker 1: the city and in the center, where we've seen videos
Speaker 1: and heard reports of what are called colictivos roaming the streets.
Speaker 5: Armed militias on motorcycles have taken over the streets, hunting
Speaker 5: down Venezuela's who support their Trump administration's operation.
Speaker 1: So these are sort of paramilitary groups who are seen
Speaker 1: as a kind of informal enforcement arm that work in
Speaker 1: parallel with the Venezuelan state. They used to be sort
Speaker 1: of grassroots community movements, then they were given weapons and
Speaker 1: they are used in many cases to intimidate and suppress
Speaker 1: any kind of descent in the country. So these colicdivos
Speaker 1: are setting up checkpoints in various parts of the city
Speaker 1: and they're checking cars, and we've also heard reports that
Speaker 1: they're checking people's phones. So everyone I know who is
Speaker 1: critical of the government or is just trying to be
Speaker 1: extra careful. Are deleting their WhatsApp messages before they walk
Speaker 1: out of the door, They're deleting their Instagram messages, They're
Speaker 1: even deleting search results on their browser pages because of
Speaker 1: any articles that might come up there as seen as
Speaker 1: critical of the government. So everyone is being extremely careful. Again,
Speaker 1: this is only really relevant to people who are critical
Speaker 1: of the government. But judging by the results of the
Speaker 1: last elections in twenty twenty four, it's a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Sandra, As you say it's not safe for people to
Speaker 3: speak out against the government in Venezuela, but can you
Speaker 3: take me back to a time before that was the case,
Speaker 3: Because there were decades of democracy in Venezuela before Hugo
Speaker 3: Chavez took over in nineteen ninety nine. How has the
Speaker 3: country been reshaped to become the repressive state that we
Speaker 3: see today.
Speaker 1: So Venezuela didn't flip into a de tatorship overnight. Chavez
Speaker 1: did come in to power through elections in nineteen ninety nine. Okay,
Speaker 1: but then I suppose, as critics would say, that he
Speaker 1: rewrote the rules of the game. So he did things
Speaker 1: like change the constitution, he removed presidential term limits. He
Speaker 1: packed the courts with judges that were loyal to him
Speaker 1: and his political movement and revolution. And he did the
Speaker 1: same thing with the electoral authority, this CNE. And the
Speaker 1: way he was able to do that as well was
Speaker 1: through oil money. Oil money helped him build these patronage networks.
Speaker 1: He bought a lot of political loyalty. He got rid
Speaker 1: of free and independent media. So by the time Chavez
Speaker 1: died and his successor Maduro took over, those democratic guardrails
Speaker 1: were already gone.
Speaker 6: The Oisinco and Marsa i Fadas, the Commandante president.
Speaker 3: The vice president Maduro has announced this news on state
Speaker 3: television that Ugu Chavez has in fact died.
Speaker 5: Of course, we know that he has been.
Speaker 1: Ill, and Maduro just hardened the system. He was accused
Speaker 1: of manipulating subsequent elections. I think a major turning point
Speaker 1: that you'd be interested in hear in some more context
Speaker 1: about is the elections that happened in July of twenty.
Speaker 6: Twenty Fourtemos El Titres put.
Speaker 1: The political opposition in Venezuela, which is actually led by
Speaker 1: last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Marie Corina Machado, signed up.
Speaker 1: Thousands of volunteers secretly signed them all up to essentially
Speaker 1: collect bits of paper that are printed from voting machines
Speaker 1: at each polling station, and those bits of paper show
Speaker 1: how many votes each candidate got from each polling station.
Speaker 1: Those bits of paper were then uploaded to a central
Speaker 1: website that anyone could then verify, and according to their account,
Speaker 1: they said that the opposition candidate ed Mundo Gonzalez won
Speaker 1: by a.
Speaker 6: Landslide pekalsient Electo is Mundo Gonzala.
Speaker 1: So then the electoral Council, which is run by a
Speaker 1: Madudo loyalists, as I mentioned, also had their own copies
Speaker 1: of those tally sheets, but never made them publicly available.
Speaker 1: They refused to hand over their copies. So when Madudo
Speaker 1: claimed victory days after the election, thousands of people, many
Speaker 1: actually from some of the poorest neighborhoods of Caracas, they
Speaker 1: took to the streets and that's when the repression really
Speaker 1: started to get pretty bad.
Speaker 3: Protests erupted across Venezuela Monday, shortly after sitting President Nicholas
Speaker 3: Maduro was declared winner in a disputed election.
Speaker 5: Thousands of people have been jailed since.
Speaker 1: Journalists, activists, politicians, even ordinary Venezuelans. One young woman was
Speaker 1: arrested and jailed for posting a TikTok that criticized the government.
Speaker 1: One of the measures under Maduo that got a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism from human rights groups was the so called
Speaker 1: Law against Hate that was introduced in twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 1: that was a very effective tool in cracking down on
Speaker 1: dissent and was used to jail a lot of opposition politicians,
Speaker 1: activists and journalists. So since then we've had thousands of
Speaker 1: people in Venezuela and jails. And so when people talk
Speaker 1: about the security apparatus ramping things up since Madudo's removal,
Speaker 1: we already had that backdrop.
Speaker 3: Before you mentioned Venezuela's Nobel Prize winning opposition leader Maria
Speaker 3: Coriina Machado. Where is she in all of this, because
Speaker 3: she seems to be on the alta with Trump now
Speaker 3: and he's trying to get back into his good books.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 1: She keeps getting asked by journalists if she stands by
Speaker 1: what she said when she received the Nobel Peace Prize
Speaker 1: that she dedicated it to the Venezuelan people but also
Speaker 1: to Trump, and she plans to give it to him.
Speaker 1: She's still seen as the kind of I would describe
Speaker 1: it as a moral face of the opposition. She's got
Speaker 1: a lot of huge international credibility, but she isn't pulling
Speaker 1: the strings right now. She's not the one calling the shots,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't chosen by the Trump administration to be
Speaker 1: inserted as the replacement.
Speaker 5: Of Nicolas Maduro.
Speaker 1: I think it's an impossible exercise to guess what Trump
Speaker 1: might do next.
Speaker 5: But he's got a lot of leverage.
Speaker 1: Militarily, economically, diplomatically, and he's openly talking like Venezuela is
Speaker 1: under some kind of American supervision. So the US isn't
Speaker 1: literally governing. But nothing is happening right now as we
Speaker 1: understand it without Washington say so, they have actually talked
Speaker 1: about a long term plan for some kind of transition toocracy,
Speaker 1: but again, who knows if that'll actually happen and if
Speaker 1: they'll follow through with it.
Speaker 3: Coming up, who will Trump target next? Sandras? Since Maduro
Speaker 3: was captured, Trump has been making these threats towards other
Speaker 3: Latin American countries. Where does that leave places like Colombia, Cuba,
Speaker 3: and Mexico.
Speaker 1: So Colombia has been in Trump's sites for a while now,
Speaker 1: and Columbia's president has pushed very hard against the US's
Speaker 1: comments about intervening in Colombian removing the so called leftist
Speaker 1: socialist president there, so the relationship there is quite tense.
Speaker 1: Cuba seems to be in some trouble as well, because
Speaker 1: Trump's openly talking about cutting off Venezuelan oil and money,
Speaker 1: which Cuba has heavily depended on for so many years.
Speaker 1: Someone on x actually recently posted saying that Marco Rubio,
Speaker 1: of the US Secretary of State should be president of Cuba.
Speaker 1: Trump then shared that post, adding sounds good to me.
Speaker 1: With Mexico, Trump has threatened land strikes.
Speaker 4: We are going to start now hitting that land. With
Speaker 4: regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It's
Speaker 4: very sad.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: There is, of course, no evidence that these are real
Speaker 1: plans or that this is anything close to an official
Speaker 1: US policy. But this is Trump's style, right. He likes
Speaker 1: to jab and that's what he's doing in the region.
Speaker 3: So, Sandra, I can only imagine how hard it must
Speaker 3: be watching all of this happen to your country, your family,
Speaker 3: and your friends at home, while you're on the other
Speaker 3: side of the world, how are you coping.
Speaker 1: It's tough as a Venezuelan and as a journalist to
Speaker 1: tell the world what's happening without putting my family and
Speaker 1: my friends in danger. I was actually asked directly by
Speaker 1: one of my relatives to stop posting on Instagram for
Speaker 1: the time being, because you know, she told me that
Speaker 1: we share a family name, and you know, I'm scared.
Speaker 1: So of course, as a journalist, you feel really hamstrung
Speaker 1: because you want to weigh in on the story and
Speaker 1: you want to be able to tell the story in
Speaker 1: a really balanced way and not hold back. It's also
Speaker 1: really frustrating because and this is something that a lot
Speaker 1: of Venezuelan's will tell you, and I'm seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of this commentary on social media that many feel really
Speaker 1: frustrated with the kind of discussion happening around Venezuela and
Speaker 1: a little hurt by some of the commentary as well,
Speaker 1: because Venezuela has been run by this very repressive regime
Speaker 1: for so many years and it very rarely makes headlines.
Speaker 1: In their words, no one seems to care about Venezuela
Speaker 1: and human rights in the country and the political prisoners
Speaker 1: in the country, And suddenly everyone has an opinion. I
Speaker 1: think many people feel that the heavy criticism of Trump's
Speaker 1: actions in Venezuela suggests that Maduro is an innocent victim here.
Speaker 1: Now we know it's not a binary situation, but this
Speaker 1: is some of the commentary I'm hearing from a lot
Speaker 1: of Venezuelans, and they're using this moment to scream out
Speaker 1: to the world. I want you to understand what we've
Speaker 1: been living through for over two decades now, and why
Speaker 1: while I don't support Trump as a president of the
Speaker 1: US or the kind of leader that he is, why
Speaker 1: even for a moment, I want to celebrate the removal
Speaker 1: of Madudu, who I blame for all of this hardship
Speaker 1: and all of this violence in the country. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's very complicated because it isn't just joy or relief.
Speaker 1: There is so much uncertainty about what comes next, and
Speaker 1: so I think there is a real unease with every
Speaker 1: Venezuelan about whether they can hold up onto hope, or
Speaker 1: whether they should be really scared, or how they even
Speaker 1: manage feeling that mix of emotions on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis.
Speaker 3: Sandra, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Speaker 5: It was a pleasure to talk to you, Nicole, Thanks
Speaker 5: for having me.
Speaker 3: Also in the news, a new ozepic like weight loss
Speaker 3: drug is set to be added to the Pharmaceutical Benefit
Speaker 3: Scheme for people with severe obesity and cardiovascular disease. Last year,
Speaker 3: the PBS Advisory Committee recommended listing the drug Wigovi for
Speaker 3: select patients. The drug works by suppressing the user's appetite.
Speaker 3: Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said that four hundred thousand
Speaker 3: Australians are currently paying market price for drugs like this,
Speaker 3: which amounts to as much as five thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 3: and Federal Cabinet Minister Madeline King has backed the controversial
Speaker 3: decision to cancel Palestinian Australian writer and academic Runder Abdulphutter
Speaker 3: from the Adelaide Writers' Festival. King is the first federal
Speaker 3: minister to publicly weigh in. The decision to act Abdulphutter
Speaker 3: was made by the board of the Adelaide Festival, not
Speaker 3: the organizers. Following widespread outcry to the decision and amass
Speaker 3: boycott of the event by writers, the chair and several
Speaker 3: other board members have resigned. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is
Speaker 3: seven a m. See you tomorrow,