Ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon be­lieves that Nicolás Maduro will not “walk out” of the pres­i­den­cy of Venezuela, even af­ter the US De­part­ment of State in­creased its re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest or con­vic­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial leader.

“He will be car­ried feet first,” Figueroa-Leon ex­claimed.

Back in 2020, the US State De­part­ment ini­tial­ly of­fered a US$15 mil­lion re­ward for his cap­ture.

On Jan­u­ary 10, the same day he was sworn in for a third six-year term in Cara­cas af­ter a con­tentious elec­tion in Ju­ly the pre­vi­ous year, the re­ward in­creased to US$25 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States, Maduro helped man­age and ul­ti­mate­ly lead the Car­tel of the Suns, a Venezue­lan drug-traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion com­prised of high-rank­ing Venezue­lan of­fi­cials.

The re­lease al­so said that Maduro par­tic­i­pat­ed in a cor­rupt and vi­o­lent nar­co-ter­ror­ism con­spir­a­cy with a des­ig­nat­ed For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­ga­ni­za­tion called FARC in Colom­bia.

He was charged in a South­ern Dis­trict of New York fed­er­al in­dict­ment for nar­co-ter­ror­ism, con­spir­a­cy to im­port co­caine, pos­ses­sion of ma­chine guns and de­struc­tive de­vices, and con­spir­a­cy to pos­sess ma­chine guns and de­struc­tive de­vices in 2020.

In a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Figueroa-Leon de­scribed the South Amer­i­can coun­try as a nar­co state and hoped this was the last year her fel­low coun­try­men and women ex­pe­ri­enced Maduro’s gov­er­nance.

She claimed those who sup­port the gov­ern­ment live well but the oth­ers sur­vive on on­ly USD5 month­ly.

“Peo­ple in Venezuela want change, that’s why they vot­ed for the op­po­si­tion, that is why they came out in their num­bers on the 9th of Jan­u­ary to be close to María Co­ri­na Macha­do,” Figueroa-Leon said.

The ac­tivist said the Bolí­var is use­less and ex­plained that a bag of bread costs mil­lions and ATMs would run out of cash af­ter three us­es.

“And what you buy­ing with the mon­ey you took out the ATM? A loaf of bread, an em­pana­da, a soft drink?” she asked.

Figueroa-Leon said her aunt still lives in Venezuela be­cause she can­not af­ford to leave. She said the woman is over 70 years old and works as a babysit­ter be­cause five dol­lars a month is not enough for her to sur­vive.

For­mer Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta Perez who came to T&T in 2018 with her fam­i­ly wants the re­ward to be in­creased.

She claimed that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has a lot of mon­ey and can pay more for pro­tec­tion.

“As Venezue­lans, we have seen that they al­ways look for ways to evade sanc­tions, they con­tin­ue do­ing busi­ness as if noth­ing had hap­pened, but that does not work. Even with the sanc­tions, many gov­ern­ment fig­ures even live and in­vest in the Unit­ed States,” she claimed.

Perez added, “Life there is un­bear­able, you can­not live on 5 dol­lars a month, spend days with­out elec­tric­i­ty, you don't know when you can put gas in your car, you have to walk many kilo­me­tres.”

Perez said if she could talk to Maduro she would tell him to “take every­thing he has stolen but to leave the coun­try in peace.”

Mean­while, Good­will Am­bas­sador for the In­ter­na­tion­al Par­lia­ment Hu­man Rights in Kar­la Hen­riquez said Maduro may face a fate sim­i­lar to Osama bin Laden or Sad­dam Hus­sein.

Hen­riquez said she agreed with the de­ci­sion by the US State De­part­ment and hoped Venezuela could re­turn to "democ­ra­cy" soon.