The people of Venezuela have been living with inflation from Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro at a level that the American people have never experienced. Through Maduro’s horrific leadership and crimes against humanity, the people are being choked out from a life of freedom and having an uncensored voice in their communities, and deciding who will make the decisions for the country.
During an international press conference on November 30th, Maduro addressed the calls for the Venezuelan people to have a change in how their country is run. “Want free, fair, and transparent elections? Elections free of sanctions? Remove them all to go to fresh, beautiful, good elections at the moment that the constitution and the CNE [Venezuela’s Electoral Council] determine.”
Maduro has been seizing the presidency since his last freely elected term ended in January 2019. Following his refusal to leave, nations like Canada, the US, the UK, and even the entire European Union have been imposing new sanctions on the rogue socialist leadership. Even the last “elections” held in the country back in May 2018 were nothing but a sham.
At the time, the opposition-led National Assembly acted upon the Venezuelan Constitution and chose Juan Guaidó as the interim President. Guaidó has hope for the people as he promised free and fair elections once Maduro left office and a transition government could be put in place. None of these things ended up happening.
Maduro’s comments come hot on the heels of a delegation opposing his regime and members of Venezuela’s “opposition” Unitary Platform resumed talks, with heavy support from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The goal is to have “free and fair” elections in 2024, with Maduro suggesting that it could happen in 2023 instead. This delegation resulted in giving back $3 billion in frozen Venezuelan assets in overseas bank accounts. The regime claims the funds will be spent on public utilities, education, health, and mitigation of the disastrous effects of the rains and floods that plagues the country earlier in 2022.
In Maduro’s mind, the other $24 billion in frozen assets is already spent. He believes that they are just negotiating with the people who kidnapped his regime, and he sees the agreement as a way to get the people of Venezuela set up to get their needs met as quickly as possible. Yet Jorge Rodríguez, president of the current regime-led National Assembly and the chief negotiator for the Maduro regime’s team, sees things very differently, and much less diplomatically.
“This is the death certificate of the Guaidóist adventure because when European countries and the United States celebrate the signing of the social agreement, they are in some way acknowledging that the record of coups d’état, assassination attempts, invasion attempts, attempts to set up parallel puppet governments, failed. It is like a kind of act of surrender, a kind of capitulation to the entire war strategy.”
Maduro also verbally attacked the Venezuelan “opposition” Unitary Platform following their agreement together as he decried them as “terrorists” and “pro-gringo.” His rhetoric might not hit the ear well for those outside of his regime, but for his base, the comments are right on target. They see this as a long struggle but believe their socialist agenda will ultimately bring the country into prosperity.
Meanwhile, the people making the oil President Biden is now authorizing companies like Chevron to start obtaining are being paid wages that aren’t providing their families much of anything, while the right in the nation just continue to get even richer. In Maduro’s mind, there is a lot that needs to be done, and he admitted that more deals were going on than the public knew about. Yet still, they aren’t enough for the dictator.
In short, the people of Venezuela will not have free elections until they have no sanctions, and the sanctions won’t be lifted until there are free elections. Talk about a catch .22.
