It is hard to imagine a case in which the People’s National Party has made a greater ass of itself than getting involved in the events in Venezuela on the side of illegitimate President Nicolas Maduro.
It is remarkable, yet totally predictable that the (PNP) would mistake a man who rigged the vote and made himself President to be a [duly elected] president.
As is to be expected the local media houses also jumped onto the bandwagon in support of Maduro under the same guise.
The fact that the United States to a large extent have supported and may have been instrumental in Mr Juan Guaido declaring himself interim president, may be playing a part in the PNP’s decision to support Maduro.
However it is not just the US which has supported the move by Guaido, so too has Canada, and quite a few Latin American and European countries.
Arguing for support of Maduro The Observer Editorial page headlined (A plea for Venezuela).
Simply put, nations that subscribe to the ideal of democracy cannot, on one hand — and rightly so we believe — dismiss Mr Nicolas Maduro’s claim to the presidency, then turn around and embrace Mr Guaido’s announcement. For Mr Guaido, in making that claim, is acting in like manner to his political foe.
In an Editorial which literally supports the decision not to support Maduro’s presidency, but for the paragraph saying Jamaica should, the Editors made plausible and convincing arguments as to why Maduro should not be president, including the following.
Readers will recall that in 2014 after a fall in oil prices sparked a major economic crisis for Venezuela, Mr Maduro’s Government greeted anti-government protests with force, resulting in the deaths of 43 people. In 2017, when protesters, in four months of demonstrations, called for Mr Maduro to step down, 125 people were killed. Also, 18 months after the Opposition won control of the National Assembly by a landslide in December 2015, Mr Maduro, in a blatant display of his disregard for democracy, created a Constituent Assembly tasked with rewriting Venezuela’s constitution. That move was regarded as designed to supersede the National Assembly in order to legitimize his grip on power.
The Editorial laid out a case by case basis for exactly why Nicolas Maduro should not be president, while claiming that quote:Nations that subscribe to the ideal of democracy cannot, on one hand — and rightly so we believe — dismiss Mr. Nicolas Maduro’s claim to the presidency.
It is exactly that kind of regressive thinking which caused the PNP to criticize the Government’s stance against the Maduro régime.
It is for those reasons that the PNP’s Lisa Hanna was out making statements to the media in support of Nicolas Maduro.
And it is that kind of lack of critical thinking by the PNP which has kept the country immersed in poverty over the years and got the country into the morass it did in the 70’s.
It is that kind of unintelligent thought process which causes the PNP to withdraw it’s support from the Government’s application of the limited states of emergency.
If the steps Nicolas Maduro took to acquire and maintain control of the government in Venezuela are illegal then his claim to the presidency are no more legitimate than that of Juan Guaido.
Without going into too much details, here is an ultra brief synopsis of Nicolas Maduro’s political life.
After entering a constitutional crisis when the Supreme Tribunal removed power from the National Assembly, months of protests occurred in 2017, leading Maduro to call for a rewrite of the constitution and resulting in at least 153 deaths. The Constituent Assembly of Venezuela was elected into office 30 July 2017, with the majority of its elected members being pro-Maduro.[24][25] On 20 May 2018, Maduro was reelected into the presidency in what the Atlantic Council and Financial Times described as a show election[26][27] which had the lowest voter turnout in Venezuela’s modern history.[28] Like Chávez, Maduro has been accused of authoritarian leadership,[29] with mainstream media describing him as a dictator, especially following the suspension of the recall movement that was directed towards him.(Wikipedia).
The People’s National Party has consistently hitched it’s wagon to despotic illegitimate governments and ideologies in the same way it has made decisions which has had demonstrably catastrophic consequences for Jamaica since 1962.
In some cases the PNP could simply have remained silent, as it should have in the Nicolas Maduro’s case.
But the PNP has never been known to exercise good judgement. Not when Michael Manley hitched his wagon to Fidel Castro,who had hitched his wagon to a dying Soviet empire.
Not even in exercising good judgement in eschewing and discarding the clenched fists, stupid berets and using the moniker “comrade”.