By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(“Plain Talk” July 26, 2024)
“Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.’ — Frederick Douglass.
“There will come a time when the rich owns all the media, and it will be impossible for the public to make an informed opinion.” — Albert Einstein
There is a counter-revolution on the way in Venezuela. If the government and people lose their nerves and play into the hands of those who believe that ordinary people have no right to freedom, dignity and a better life, things could rapidly get out of hand.
For 25 years, the people of Venezuela have decided to chart a new course. They began this journey with Hugo Chavez, who won a spectacular victory in 1998. The leadership declared they intended to build a 21st-century socialism that would put the people first. For example, the country’s massive resources, especially oil reserves, were used to build up the people. Millions of homes were constructed, and education and health care became free. Many poor Venezuelans testified that it was the first time they were able to see a dentist.
But a law of social development reveals that revolution breeds counter-revolution. The governors of the world, the rich and powerful countries, especially the United States and the European Union, frowned on the Bolivarian experiment. They immediately began to plot. Their initial scheme unfolded between April 11 and 13, 2002. President Chavez was captured and spirited away. The media trumpeted the news that Chavez was overthrown. But the people would have none of it. Millions of Venezuelans took to the streets to demand his release.
Once that attempted coup failed, the Americans and Europeans ramped up the pressures. They decided to make the Venezuelan economy scream. This tried-and-tested policy bore fruits in the early 1970s in Chile. Salvador Allende, a socialist, was elected president in democratically held elections in 1970. The CIA sponsored a campaign of destabilisation and sabotage, bribery and intrigue that resulted in the military assassinating Allende and overthrowing his government. A similar smear and destabilisation policy was carried out against Michael Manley’s government in Jamaica between 1972 and 1980 and the People’s Revolutionary government of Maurice Bishop after the revolution triumphed in 1979.
These powerful governments employed illegal sanctions and denied credit and financial assistance through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and private lending agencies. With the denial of loans and credit and the intensification of sanctions, the government is unable to carry on with its programme of development. People become deprived, and the very people whom the government’s policies are intended to help become frustrated, intimidated, tired and even fed up with the daily grind of living. They may not necessarily become opposed to their leaders. They just want to ease the pressure.
Another strand of the counter-revolutionary plan is finding willing surrogates to act as opposition elements. These people are immediately hailed as heroes by the mainstream media. Their every word is gospel. Take the opposition figure, Maria Carina Machado. The media tells us that she was denied an opportunity to contest the elections. It never says why. But the constitutional court of Venezuela blocked her from contesting because she took the seat of a foreign government, Panama, at the meeting of the Organisation of American States and called for the military overthrow of the Venezuelan government. For context, try going to any foreign capital and call for the military overthrow of the U.S. or any European government.
Take further Ms Machado’s claim that the opposition has proof that they won 70% of the votes. Sceptics across the Americas and the world are asking the Venezuelan government to verify the vote count. Let them show their proof. The Government said that their electoral system was hacked, preventing the completion of the count. They identified the source of the hacking. Many brilliant computer and electronics technologists can verify this claim.
But those questioning the election results have no desire to verify them. The Western leaders want to stir uncertainty and manufacture doubt. Even before the elections, they claimed that they would be unfair.
For the third time in 11 years, President Maduro has gone to the polls and won. Another noteworthy fact is that since 1998, when President Chavez came to power, the government has gone to the polls 33 times, and it has won 31 of those contests. It lost the 2007 referendum and the 2015 parliamentary elections. On both occasions, it accepted the results. On the contrary, the US and EU governments and their surrogates in Caracas only accept election results when those they bankroll and support win.
The Western leaders and their backers underestimated President Maduro’s strategic, tactical, and leadership skills. They derisively dismiss him as a bus driver. They unjustly smear him with drug trafficking charges. They are intent on removing him from power by legal or illegal means.
We saw this tactic unfold in Brazil in 2018. There are military coups and constitutional coups. The current president, Lula Da Silva, was jailed on trumped-up charges to prevent him from contesting an election in which polls showed he was the clear front-runner. That plot allowed ultra-conservative Jair Balsanaro to win the presidency. It has since been revealed that the U.S. intelligence agencies worked closely with the prosecutors to subvert Brazilian democracy.
We can expect the powerful to turn up the pressure on the Venezuelan leadership. They will punish the people for voting yet again for revolution and change. They will plot and scheme until they get their nefarious way.
In this fight for freedom, development and progressive transformation, people must be reminded that freedom ain’t free.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former senator and Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
It is not by might not by power but by my Spirit said the Lord of host. God will not share his glory with another. Man always want the glory for themselves, so they say do it my way. No, your way have fail time and time again. Do it God’s way this Time.
I write these words not with the aim of responding to your article, but so that the person who reads it has another perspective on the events and not just yours.
I will start by giving you some data, which is what you should have done before supporting one side or the other.
-The Macedonian government denied that any attack originated from its territory and stated that if the Venezuelan government had any evidence, they should provide it for investigation (to date, no evidence has been provided).
-The Carter Center, invited by the CNE and the government itself, stated that the elections were not democratic.
-The cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which is Russian, affirmed that no attacks were reported in Venezuelan territory.
-Not even CARICOM can unanimously say that democratic elections were held.
-The president of the CNE was a founder and still belongs to the PSUV; in fact, he was a key figure in the disqualification of María Corina Machado as a presidential candidate.
-The judges of the Supreme Court are aligned with and belong to the PSUV.
-Where is the separation of powers, where is the impartiality, when all institutions are in the hands of the government?
-The opposition published a website where each record can be reviewed table by table, municipality by municipality, and state by state: [https://resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com/](https://resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com/).
-Brazil and Colombia withdrew from international observation and today urge the dictator to show the records with complete transparency and with national and international observations.
Now I ask you, do you know what it is like to live on three dollars a month? Do you know what it is like to live with constant blackouts and no electricity? Do you know what it is like to live without running water? Do you know what it is like to live persecuted for your thoughts, for thinking differently? Do you know what it is like to live knowing your family is divided and you can barely see them? Do you know what it is like to live when almost eight million Venezuelans have been displaced to other countries in search of freedom and a better life? Do you know?
To avoid further justifications that the economic sanctions imposed by the United States have been since 2019 and are specifically targeted at Maduro and his cronies—specific individuals with millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts—these sanctions make those people use the money they have stolen from the people.
I also remind you that 25% of oil production is bought by the U.S. government, and since the Barbados agreements, which Mr. Maduro refused to comply with, a license was granted to Chevron to operate, thereby increasing the government’s revenue
I have a fairly high IQ, and from what I understand in your article, you mean that with the murder and arbitrary detentions, you are calling to defend a system in which the people took to the streets to vote massively and have been robbed by a totalitarian regime. The data is there, the inconsistencies are there, the evidence is there. If your leftist, socialist, communist way of thinking cannot see what is objectively there, please refrain from writing another article that deeply offends the heart of every Venezuelan and Cuban who wants and deserves freedom.
Your job as a “journalist” is to investigate and analyze both sides, not just what one side says. Therefore, Albert Einstein’s quote also applies to you because you repeat what government-aligned media shout without any proof or evidence. In this case, the counter-revolution is the government, and the true revolution is being carried out in the streets by the Venezuelan people and the supposed opposition.
Freedom as we know it is not electing a Government who has managed to remain in power despite running to country into the ground. If you walk the streets of Caracas today you will see the people in powers are not working right. Even as Venezuela, which was once the richest country in latin America and is now one of the poorest, having nationals now being the biggest thieves and con artist in south America while Venezuela continue to struggle even as they have the largest oil reserves in the world. — Political corruption, chronic shortages of food and medicine, closure of businesses, unemployment, deterioration of productivity, authoritarianism, human rights violations, gross economic mismanagement and with it’s high dependence on oil have also contributed to the worsening crisis today–. I will say again, I don’t live in Venezuela but I have friends who lived there and they surely disagree with your made-up opinions. You being a black man should never be saying the things you’re saying.
I am in utter bewilderment of your policies concerning readers’ commentaries because over the last few years I have submiited various comments on articles published in this newspaper, and you NEVER publish them. Meanwhile, week after week I observe that preference is given to comments made by particular readers, and so they are regularly published. Maybe you are not interested in diveristy of thought or a reader/commentator with whom you are not familar.
Silvio Rodriguez
I don’t normally reply to readers comments, but I read them all. I choose to reply to you for this reason only: If you disregard the over 900 sanctions placed on Venezuela and the strangulation of the Venezuelan economy by the US and EU governments, no one should take you seriously.
Even the US policy makers have said that the sanctions are intended to make the economy scream so as to make life miserable for the citizens. The singular hope is that the population would turn their backs on the government.
There is a mountain of evidence that the people of Venezuela have indeed turned their backs on the government, something the Maduro regime, Ralph Gonsalves, and you refuse to acknowledge because of a preference for socialism to prevail by any means necessary including rejecting the will of the people for a change in leadership.