Mad Maduro’s grab for continued power in Venezuela continues inexorably – and we cannot afford to be blasé about him as Venezuela’s President for another six years!! On our own, it might appear there ain’t much we can do about it but that assumes military strength is our only option. But if we go down that road to paralyze our actions, we’re operating on a false premise. According to the DIME principle that every wet-behind-the-ears student of International Relations 101 learns, the military option is only ONE of four instruments of national power – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
So what have we been doing diplomatically? Your Eyewitness knows that here, we gotta go on a full-court press internationally to convince COUNTRIES THAT MATTER to put as much pressure on Mad Maduro to make him baulk at his self-coronation this Friday. We shouldn’t utilize too much of our diplomatic on pipsqueaks like Ralphie Gonsalves of St Vincent – excepting to quit allowing him to cozy-up to us as a Caricom member. We just gotta signal to him that one day he’s gonna run to our rock for rescue, but there will be no rock!!
The countries that matter most when it comes to Venezuela are Brazil and the States. Brazil has long chafed at Venezuela’s pretensions to be the Top Gun in Latin America. But the latter’s economic meltdown under Chavez and his pale imitator Mad Maduro, has offered them the opportunity to cut the Bolivarians down to size. Lula already kicked Mad Maduro in the nuts when he blackballed Venezuela’s application to join BRICS+!! We gotta explicitly support Brazil’s refusal to accept Mad Maduro’s concocted election “results” to insist he won – without offering proof as the Opposition has done with their counterclaim.
But the elephant in the Venezuelan room is the US – where our interests, especially with the incoming Trump Administration – coincide. Or do they?? While Trump is definitely for regime change – even his heavily stacked anti-Maduro Cabinet and advisory bodies will have to factor in the failure of their post-2019 backing of Guaido as the president-elect after the then elections. Right off the bat, we should rule out any full-blown Iraq-like invasion to again secure oil supplies. Tightening sanctions and cancelling oil-production licenses to Chevron and other Western oil majors might be the best we can hope for.
And that’s where we can come in – not only diplomatically but economically by assuring that the Exxon conglomerate will not be hindered in ramping up production to the projected 1.3 M b/d – the bulk of which will go to the States!!
And this is another reason why we shouldn’t get into Chavez-type “renegotiation” demands at this time!!
…on agri
There were two bits of news on the agri front last week. First, there were the promises of improvement in the sugar sector – after Pressie fired a warning shot across Guysuco’s management team’s bow to emphasise that heads were gonna be rolling soon. But how many times haven’t we heard these promises?? And to what effect?? What’s that old saying? – fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on ME. What about fooling the govt dozens of times – as in sugar??
To your Eyewitness, that means it’s way past time to go into a whole new direction – suggested by the second bit of agri news. To wit – starting with 500 acres in corn and soya three years ago, the private sector operators just successfully reaped 12,000 acres!! And will be cultivating 25,000 acres this year!! To your Eyewitness, this says we gotta pass on the sugar industry ASAP to the private sector – without tying their hands too much!!
Peasant farmers and centralized operations for purchasing, transportation and processing??
…$100K distribution
Pensioners in Reg 3 who couldn’t collect their one-off cash $100K grant at the two centres are now told they can soon collect at the FOURTEEN NDC offices. Hopefully, they’ll each have some sorta system.
