While Haiti Burns And Trump Heads For Summit With North Korea’s Strongman Kim Jong-un

Washington and its Western allies are hell-bent on seeing the overthrow of Venezuela’s elected leader President Nicolas Maduro while seeking to insert the self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaido into office.

Many have viewed the move by Washington and its allies as tantamount to a palace coup.

The genesis of Venezuela’s crisis some would argue began when Hugo Chavez assumed power in 1998 spouting the left-wing ideology of socialism.

Following the death of Chavez in 2013, Nicolás Maduro was made President of Venezuela winning the election in 2013 as well re-election in May last year.

However, Maduro has had no honeymoon since assuming leadership as he inherited an economy spiraling into decline since 2010.

Moreover, he has faced vigorous opposition from the Democratic Unity Roundtable, a catch-all electoral coalition of political parties formed in January 2008 to unify the opposition to first opposed President Hugo Chávez and later Maduro.

 At the same time, Maduro’s socialist policies have not endeared him to a large section of the populace.

Furthermore, the opposition has contested Maduro’s latest election charging fraud and a violation of the constitution despite the ruling of the Supreme Court that under Venezuela’s Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president.

That said, opposition leaders and international media pundits have considered the government of Maduro to be a dictatorship.

Now, the country is said to be divided into two camps, the pro-Chavistas versus the anti-Chavistas — opposition protesters.

Since the re-election of Maduro, the country has seen hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans taken to the streets protesting high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods which protesters have attributed to policies of the federal government under the leadership of Maduro.

However, Maduro has charged Washington for placing a stranglehold on his country because of its political ideology.

“The United States, Donald Trump’s government, has sequestered $10bn (£7.75bn) of bank accounts that belong to us. They have sequestered billions of dollars in gold in London that is ours – that is money to buy supplies, raw materials, food, medicines. They have sequestered $1.4bn for many months, that we are going to use to buy food, medicines in Euroclear,” Maduro said in a BBC.

In the meantime, in Haiti, there has been mass protests and a general strike against growing poverty, corruption, and mismanagement of the country’s resources.

However, this has mostly gone unnoticed by Washington thus forcing critics to ask what’s the difference between the happenings on the ground in Haiti versus Venezuela.

There are no tweets from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on the situation in Haiti, but his twitter feed on Venezuela is like the running Mississippi river.

Moreover, President Donald Trump is yet to pontificate on the current situation in Haiti. In fact, his last comment on Haiti was when he reportedly classified Haiti among the “shithole” countries.

That said, protestors in Haiti continue to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse, given their dire socio-economic situation, without any end in sight.

At the same time, President Trump has jetted off to meet with North Korea strongman Kim Jong-un.

Notwithstanding that country’s blatant disregard for human rights under a Totalitarian regime and one that a UN inquiry into human rights has concluded that “The gravity, scale, and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

The fact is Trump is not only seeking for a win in getting Kim to abandon his nuclear and missile program in exchange for economic and security benefits but also is bent on boosting his credentials for another term in office.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive,” is a befitting quote to describe the current political scenario that obtains.

Yvad Billings, Readers Bureau, Fellow

Edited by Jesus Chan

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