Venezuela and political issues

One former Caribbean prime minister sought to compare the situation in Venezuela to the abomination that was South Africa in the days of apartheid.

On the basis of a comparison that could only exist in his mind, he attempts to rationalise his opposition to the statements of the heads of certain Caribbean countries, taking care to avoid the Prime Minister of TT .

He neglects, of course, to acknowledge that the impetus for change in South Africa was the removal of the support of developed countries, principally the US and Great Britain, which countries had for decades given full support to the apartheid regime, in the face of repeated demands at the United Nations for punitive sanctions.

In the case of Venezuela, it is exactly the opposite. The motivation on this occasion is access to the vast reserves of Venezuelan oil by the mighty US, but even the Americans had to admit that the solution is critical support, not intervention.

In a letter in the dailies, the US Embassy referred to the approach of the late, great Hugo Chavez, comparing his governance favourably with that of Nicolas Maduro, something which was unimaginable during Chavez’s lifetime.

Apparently, they have belatedly recognised that his socialist policies brought tremendous benefits to the ordinary people of the country and should have been encouraged.

Now that they have been stymied in their efforts to destabilise Maduro’s government, they are willing to foment revolution among the people and are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve this objective.

Unfortunately, some of our fellow citizens, irrationally opposed to the idea of socialism, refuse to accept that it is socialism that has afforded them the right to freedom of speech that allows them to express their opinions freely, that in fact most of the freedoms that they take for granted are socialist concepts and would never have come about without the commitment to the socialist ideals of those who went before us.

The labour movement has been in the forefront of the struggles to encompass those rights in the day-to-day lives of all the disadvantaged people in the world and will continue the struggle long after we are gone. The struggle never ends because of people who believe that human rights are the privilege of the favoured few.

KARAN MAHABIRSINGH Carapichaima