What's next for Venezuela?

So I was in Europe at the time, and we got messages from my uncle who told us they heard the windows rattle, and they thought, my goodness, it's an earthquake. And then came the boom.

At least seven explosions have been heard in the capital Caracas, accompanied by a number of low flying aircraft.

At first they wondered, is this the military turning on the regime, because that's a scenario that many Venezuelans have wondered whether it might happen. But then came the sound of so many other explosions across the city, and then they realized that there was a massive, massive operation going on.

This is Sandra, she's a Venezuelan journalist based abroad. We're not telling you her full name because her family back home are worried about revenge attacks.

And then very quickly we got the post from Donald Trump on truth Social saying that Maduro had been captured.

The former leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Madudo in handcuffs. You can see those blacked out sunglasses over his eyes. He is wearing the earmuffs as well. He looks to be in a tracksuit.

It all happened so fast, No one could really grasp what was going on. But seeing Maduro wearing those headphones and that imask in that Nike tracksuit was so surreal. No one ever imagined that moment would come.

This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.

Now, with Nicholas Maduro facing charges of Naco terrorism and drug trafficking in New York, Venezuela's future is uncertain.

So we are going to run the country until such.

Time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.

The big questions who will really run the country and its oil industry, and what does Trump's intervention there mean for the rest of the world. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today Maduro's legacy and what comes next for Venezuela. It's Tuesday, January thirteenth. Sandra, you have friends and family in the capital, Caracas. What are they telling you about what's happening on the ground there.

Well, I just got off the phone with a relative of mine who lives in Karrakaz, and she says things are bizarrely normal. People are going to work, there's no panic buying. Remember, the economy in Venezuela is in shambles and prices are really high for all sorts of things, so people can't actually afford to panic buy, and they can't afford not to work, So that's also contributing to

Armed militias on motorcycles have taken over the streets, hunting down Venezuela's who support their Trump administration's operation.

So these are sort of paramilitary groups who are seen as a kind of informal enforcement arm that work in parallel with the Venezuelan state. They used to be sort of grassroots community movements, then they were given weapons and they are used in many cases to intimidate and suppress any kind of descent in the country. So these colicdivos are setting up checkpoints in various parts of the city and they're checking cars, and we've also heard reports that

Sandra, As you say it's not safe for people to speak out against the government in Venezuela, but can you take me back to a time before that was the case, Because there were decades of democracy in Venezuela before Hugo Chavez took over in nineteen ninety nine. How has the country been reshaped to become the repressive state that we see today.

So Venezuela didn't flip into a de tatorship overnight. Chavez did come in to power through elections in nineteen ninety nine. Okay, but then I suppose, as critics would say, that he rewrote the rules of the game. So he did things like change the constitution, he removed presidential term limits. He packed the courts with judges that were loyal to him and his political movement and revolution. And he did the

The Oisinco and Marsa i Fadas, the Commandante president.

The vice president Maduro has announced this news on state television that Ugu Chavez has in fact died.

Of course, we know that he has been.

Ill, and Maduro just hardened the system. He was accused of manipulating subsequent elections. I think a major turning point that you'd be interested in hear in some more context about is the elections that happened in July of twenty.

Twenty Fourtemos El Titres put.

The political opposition in Venezuela, which is actually led by last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Marie Corina Machado, signed up. Thousands of volunteers secretly signed them all up to essentially collect bits of paper that are printed from voting machines at each polling station, and those bits of paper show how many votes each candidate got from each polling station.

Landslide pekalsient Electo is Mundo Gonzala.

So then the electoral Council, which is run by a Madudo loyalists, as I mentioned, also had their own copies of those tally sheets, but never made them publicly available. They refused to hand over their copies. So when Madudo claimed victory days after the election, thousands of people, many actually from some of the poorest neighborhoods of Caracas, they took to the streets and that's when the repression really started to get pretty bad.

Protests erupted across Venezuela Monday, shortly after sitting President Nicholas Maduro was declared winner in a disputed election.

Thousands of people have been jailed since.

Journalists, activists, politicians, even ordinary Venezuelans. One young woman was arrested and jailed for posting a TikTok that criticized the government. One of the measures under Maduo that got a lot of criticism from human rights groups was the so called Law against Hate that was introduced in twenty seventeen, and that was a very effective tool in cracking down on dissent and was used to jail a lot of opposition politicians, activists and journalists. So since then we've had thousands of

Before you mentioned Venezuela's Nobel Prize winning opposition leader Maria Coriina Machado. Where is she in all of this, because she seems to be on the alta with Trump now and he's trying to get back into his good books.

That's right.

She keeps getting asked by journalists if she stands by what she said when she received the Nobel Peace Prize that she dedicated it to the Venezuelan people but also to Trump, and she plans to give it to him. She's still seen as the kind of I would describe it as a moral face of the opposition. She's got a lot of huge international credibility, but she isn't pulling

Of Nicolas Maduro.

I think it's an impossible exercise to guess what Trump might do next.

But he's got a lot of leverage.

Militarily, economically, diplomatically, and he's openly talking like Venezuela is under some kind of American supervision. So the US isn't literally governing. But nothing is happening right now as we understand it without Washington say so, they have actually talked about a long term plan for some kind of transition toocracy, but again, who knows if that'll actually happen and if they'll follow through with it.

Coming up, who will Trump target next? Sandras? Since Maduro was captured, Trump has been making these threats towards other Latin American countries. Where does that leave places like Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.

So Colombia has been in Trump's sites for a while now, and Columbia's president has pushed very hard against the US's comments about intervening in Colombian removing the so called leftist socialist president there, so the relationship there is quite tense. Cuba seems to be in some trouble as well, because Trump's openly talking about cutting off Venezuelan oil and money, which Cuba has heavily depended on for so many years.

We are going to start now hitting that land. With regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It's very sad.

Now.

There is, of course, no evidence that these are real plans or that this is anything close to an official US policy. But this is Trump's style, right. He likes to jab and that's what he's doing in the region.

So, Sandra, I can only imagine how hard it must be watching all of this happen to your country, your family, and your friends at home, while you're on the other side of the world, how are you coping.

It's tough as a Venezuelan and as a journalist to tell the world what's happening without putting my family and my friends in danger. I was actually asked directly by one of my relatives to stop posting on Instagram for the time being, because you know, she told me that we share a family name, and you know, I'm scared. So of course, as a journalist, you feel really hamstrung because you want to weigh in on the story and you want to be able to tell the story in

Sandra, thank you so much for talking to us today.

It was a pleasure to talk to you, Nicole, Thanks for having me.

Also in the news, a new ozepic like weight loss drug is set to be added to the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme for people with severe obesity and cardiovascular disease. Last year, the PBS Advisory Committee recommended listing the drug Wigovi for select patients. The drug works by suppressing the user's appetite.