…around Mad Maduro
Mad Maduro’s actions over the last few years have certainly raised political temperatures in Tacuba Lodge and the Presidential compound. But there are always lessons lurking in these circumstances, and, with us, it should remind our leaders of the fundamental maxim of politics: there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies when it comes to relations between nations; just permanent interests. For instance, we should now know – after witnessing what limb Ralph Gonzalves and some other Caricom leaders have chosen to jump on – that all this talk about our “Caribbean family” will remain just that – talk!!
And even then, Mad Maduro with his PetroCaribe Fund will be able to talk much louder than us!! Now, this doesn’t mean we should stop talking to Ralph, or anything like that; just that we shouldn’t have trusted him so explicitly when he undertook to broker a rapprochement with Mad Maduro at Argyle. He was just used as bait by Mad Maduro to score a major diplomatic coup in the region and further afield. A “Zone of Peace” when he was all ready to annex our Essequibo?? That was “peace” all right; the perpetual peace we find in graveyards!!
But it’s not just tiny St Vincent that would pursue its cold self-interest, rather than some “greater good” that may be in our interest. Just consider Brazil’s reaction to the massive heist Mad Maduro pulled off at the July 28 elections. After first demanding that the Venezuelan Elections Council – controlled by Mad Maduro – make public the tallies of the voting machines, equivalent to our SOPs, he’s now asking Mad Maduro to hold new elections – “if he has good sense”! – under a new electoral committee and with observers from across the world!! Mad Maduro has good sense all right – just like a fox!!
Isn’t that exactly what he’d agreed to in the 2023 Barbados Agreement, wherein he and the Opposition had signed off on a menu of electoral reforms, which the US supported after it was announced? But then Mad Maduro’s packed Supreme Court promptly disqualified the most charismatic and popular Opposition Leader, Maria Machado, and it was all downhill from there!! So, who does Lula think he’s foolin’?? Not surprisingly, both Mad Maduro and Machado have rejected the proposal, with the latter expressing the sentiments of most observers: what happens after he screws around with the second poll?? Hold a third, and so on until he gets tired??
So, what’s Lula’s interest?? He wants to maintain his “progressive” credentials as he sucks up to China in BRICS. So, he must’ve received a shock when Sleepy Joe Biden announced he also supported new elections.
Luckily for Lula, the US administration quickly announced that Biden was just meandering!!
…in Ukraine?
It’s said that, after a while, we get used to conditions that we never would’ve thought we would brook. Remember when you used to actually read your comics in the pit latrine?? Well, look how we’ve gotten used to wars raging and thousands of persons being obliterated by bombs and bullets; and we go on with life as we agonize over the rising price of bora!!
Over in Palestine, if it’s another day, then there must’ve been another bomb dropped over a school or suchlike – killing another dozen or so schoolchildren. Ho hum!! Then up north, in Ukraine, their beleaguered army just pulled a stunner in turning the tables on the Ruskies by actually invading Russian territory!! Man bites dog!! No one…least of all the Ruskies, expected this!!
Now, we know they’ll soon be dislodged and repelled, but, in the meantime, Putin’s certainly red in the face, as he’s forced to discuss prisoner exchange with Zelenskiy!! Ahhh…the shame of a former KGB officer negotiating with a former comedian.
It ain’t funny!!
…no more
The PPP are certainly giving the PNC a full-court press in some of its erstwhile strongholds. They went into the African-Guyanese community of Uitvlugt and helped establish 50 chicken farms. Teach a man to “mind fowl”…
