Submitted by Gabriel Varvaro
Just read the interview by Barbados Today with the Venezuelan Ambassador … what a shower of old left wing garbage that was. I made some pertinent comments as I was left outrage by this but it seems like Barbados Today did not find them adequate for their news outlet.
My comments on the article:
Unfortunately the Ambassador (who by the way doesn’t even speak English and is not a career diplomat) is telling the same big set of lies that leftish cleptocrats continue to tell inside and outside Venezuela. Venezuela has had an unprecedented oil revenue during the Chavez administration, in the region of US$120 BILLION and it only takes someone to have a look around its cities, highways, hospitals and fields to realise that the money has evaporated. Not only has earned a lot more than the previous 40 years of democratic governments but it has also TRIPLED the foreign debt by numerous loans from China and Russia to buy from TVs and washing machines to AK47 and Sukoi planes.
This same regime, the one that named the Ambassador can be clearly defined as CLEPTOCRACY, in which all it matters to its officials is to steal the country’s revenue and firmly grip to power in order to continue the robbery.
One of the main causes of the revenue bleeding is the currency exchange commission (CADIVI) in which a new oligarchy (called Boligarchy) has been getting preferential forex to import all sort of things. This is so true, that the regime in the voice of its central bank president and also the minister of planning and economy acknowledged that there were $25 BILLION that were simply used for personal gains and not for the intended imports by the use of Briefcase Companies, (that is companies that only exist in paper and do not really operate but act as intermediaries sometimes and forgers in other).
Yes, the government has started (and abandoned) many social policies, specially many “grants” for all sorts of “needs”, even the spouses of jailed men were at some point receiving hand outs. The problem with this is clear and widely recognise as a source of long term poverty and oppression since it makes the citizen directly dependent on the government and limits its freedom to think to the line of thought imposed from the party-government.
Furthermore, the above is just compounded by the improvisation and inefficiency of these programmes in which people that would benefit is made queue for hours and sometimes days to either cash the cheque or to buy the subsidized food or even to access a bottle of gas for their stoves (all utilities have been nationalized, so no private company participates in the supply of electricity, phones, gas, water, etc). Just imagine how unproductive a country would be if its citizens have to spend working hours just queuing to access basic goods?
Regarding the allegations made by the Ambassador on the murder of the beauty queen, this was done (along with other 37 people to this date) by the government backed thugs (euphemistically called “Colectivos”). There is plenty of footage to back this and the many other murders enacted by the regime’s supporters. This is not gossip or rumour, it is actually recognised by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN plus the hundreds of videos posted in YouTube, Facebook and Twitter by the very same people living in the war zone that has become Venezuela.
Shame on you ambassador.
PS: one little old joke tells of how does a tyrant, a democrat and a leftie deal with his wife infidelity…. the tale goes that the tyrant would hit the woman, the democrat would talk it through and the leftie would blame the USA…
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