Over the last few years Venezuela has through its PetroCaribe oil and development facility provided an economic lifeline for most Caribbean Basin economies; extending support in a manner that no other country has been willing to replicate. It is therefore scarcely surprising that the outcome of the recent election in that nation has resulted in varying levels of uncertainty in virtually all 17 PetroCaribe member states.
As is well known, President Maduro’s ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) lost control on December 6 of the country’s National Assembly with the opposition coalition, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) taking 112 of the parliament’s 167 seats.
This slim super-majority potentially offers the country’s opposition the opportunity to undertake far reaching reforms. They could dismiss recently appointed Supreme Court judges, change the country’s 1999 socialist constitution, restructure institutions such as the election board, remove ministers, and even approve a recall election against President Maduro in 2016 if they were able to obtain the 4 million signatures needed to trigger a referendum.
These are of course domestic issues that only indirectly touch the Caribbean, but they have also resulted in concern about how Venezuela’s newly elected legislators will respond to the deep-seated production problems of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA),
