You gotta hand it to Maduro. Can you think of any other leader of a country who’s created 7 million refugees – a quarter of its population – and is still in power? Well, of course you can. There was Papa Doc of Haiti and Trujillo of the Dominican Republic – not to mention our very own Burnham of Guyana! – right here in our own hemisphere!! And you get it, don’t you, dear Reader?? That’s right – go to the head of the class! – they’re all dictators!!
But he can say, “I won elections that put me in power!!”, and we can say – after our “elections” under Burnham – no matter how you slice it or dice it, they wuz all rigged. As with Burnham – who was very creative and bold – maybe we mightn’t know how the rigging’s carried out, but we know that people don’t return into office a fella who’s destroyed their country to such an extent that middle class occupants have been reduced to scavenging from garbage cans!!
The claims of rigging have been trumpeted loud and clear by the Opposition during that decade – and the US and other democracies only recently refused to recognise the Maduro regime, and had declared one Opposition Leader, Guido, as President for a while. But the Opposition were so divided that they weren’t able to maintain a consistent, united front. And Maduro capitalised on their disarray to hold on to power with the help of the army that put him – and his predecessor guru, Chavez – into power!
Well, elections are due next year, and once again, the Opposition are trying to get their act together. Under the good offices of Norway, Maduro and the Opposition reps have just concluded an agreement in Barbados as to how the election’s gonna be conducted – under the watchful eyes of international observers. But there’s one major sign that the leopard hasn’t changed his spots: Maduro’s most formidable foe – Maria Marcado – has been banned by his ally, the comptroller-general!! That’s like going into a fight with the opponent’s hands tied behind his back!! It ain’t fair – and it certainly ain’t democratic!!
But other forces are in play that had to’ve given Maduro reason to smile. The global balances of forces have been shifting after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the West’s inability to roll the latter back – even though they’ve imposed sanctions on Russian petroleum exports – as they did on Venezuela’s for years!! So we see the US now easing its sanctions on Maduro, while Russia’s about to host him to further cement their cooperation to evade oil sanctions!!
We in Guyana gotta be wary about the US’ historic short attention span – there’s no permanent enemy or permanent friend…
…more war crimes
Now, the argument as to who hit who first – like most schoolyard fights – gonna never end. But the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza – after Hamas’s attack – after the Israelis’ harassment and incursions even on sacred spaces and so on – ain’t no schoolyard fight. Firing a missile on a hospital that’s known to be occupied not only by Palestinians seeking refuge from missiles – but also real patients, including kids – definitively constituted a “war crime”. For the Israelis to claim that the Palestinians bombed their own hospital is insulting the world’s intelligence: from the missile’s trajectory, Hamas had to’ve been occupying Israel!!
But that it was done while US Pres Biden was visiting to show solidarity with Israel betrays their confidence that the Americans will turn a blind eye to any and all atrocities and war crimes. But as your Eyewitness pointed out, their actions are turning off even some of America’s staunchest allies. The extraordinary outpouring of support for the Palestinian cause has to force an American rethinking…
…the money
But when we in Guyana still think about the nation state as the players on the global stage, we gotta appreciate that after globalization for five decades, it’s an international elite 1% now calling the shots!!
