Possible scenarios in Venezuela's El Aissami crisis

Tareck El Aissami, now the former Minister of Energy and Petroleum, resigned on Monday in a moment of tension and uncertainty within the Chavista regime.

On March 17th, in a move ordered by the Maduro government, the National Anti-Corruption Police began arresting judicial, local government and state oil company officials prosecuted for corruption felonies, all from El Aissami's faction in the PSUV.

Southern Pulse founder Samuel Logan met with our team and additional sources in Venezuela yesterday and prepared the following for review and consideration:?

“We see three scenarios, based on how El Aissami will ‘land’ now that he has left the public-facing side of the Maduro regime”.

One of them, and the most likely according to Logan, is the permanence of Tareck El Aissami as a political operator within the ruling party, but with no direct or public involvement in government. He may have some degree of immunity from the ongoing wave of arrests.

The second possibility is qualified by Logan as a "hard landing", in which the former minister would be subjected to a detention like that of the officials of his closest allies under the pressure of his internal rivals in the PSUV and in the context of a cooling of his ties with Maduro himself. In his analysis, this scenario is “improbable”.

Critics of El Aissami within the ruling party are mostly main figures of Nicolás Maduro’s entourage, among them the powerful siblings Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, who hold key positions in the executive and legislative branches.

Finally, Logan expects that a third scenario might develop. Mr. El Aissami could push the "red button" – an event that would surely aggravate this crisis and further widen the internal division inside Maduro’s version of Chavismo.?

“We’ve seen it before. We know the USG can be powerfully persuasive. There is a USD10MM reward on his head, one that El Aissami would likely love to remove before moving on with his life after his decades-long run as a Venezuelan political power broker,” Logan said.