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Dark. Clouded. With greater violence a likelihood.
Sad to see a country with so much potential not exercise its possibilities.
Hugo Chavez, a close follower of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, started the nation on its downhill course by wrecking their oil industry.
And when he died of cancer in 2013, he anointed Nicolas Maduro to succeed him.
I don’t know what Chavez saw in Maduro, other than he would be a faithful follower.
This last Sunday, July 28th, after another general election was held, Maduro brazenly falsified the results to keep himself in office. The man just stole the vote.
He was saying to Venezuelans and anyone who would listen, ‘this country belongs to me and I’ll kill anybody who challenges me.’
Protests continue as we speak but the likelihood is that the military will stifle them. Step on their brothers and sisters. Clobber them.
More and more Venezuelan will die and more and more will emigrate, adding to the over 7 million that already have done so.
Maduro would not be in power without the complicity of the military and of other Venezuelans who are ripping off their fellow citizens.
And then there’s the support of Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un and Iran’s clerics.
Putin took a break from his daily killing of Ukrainians, to congratulate Maduro, and upon hearing that there were street protests demanding he accept the real results, reminded Maduro that he would always be welcome on Russian soil.
It’s a club.
A small gathering of power men supporting each other. ‘In the name of the people’.
On July 19th, in an article in the NY Times, a Venezuelan activist proposed that the US intercede by offering Maduro and company protection from legal action, so they would just go away.
The offer was probably never made, and Maduro and company may have concluded that if such offer were made, that it might be a trick.
So they chose instead to stay in charge. Objective — to remain in power until the end of their lives.
It’s power or death. The same choice that Cuban leaders have made. And Nicaraguans. And North Koreans. And Russians. And Chinese. And the military thugs in Myanmar.
Against that vile expression of humanity, there are people like Maria Corina Machado, Edmundo Gonzalez and all those supporters who went out and voted on Sunday and now are protesting the voter fraud at the risk of their lives. Those are valiant Venezuelans. Courageous men and women, believers in democracy and the power of the vote.
As of now…
