Venezuela in the Security Council

By Luis Manuel Aguana

You will say that it is not very elegant to be constantly referencing me, quoting things that I have already written in relation to the issues that concern us, nor to be saying "I told you so" when something happens to us, but I believe that in our case it is necessary by virtue of the extraordinary capacity that we Venezuelans have to forget things. Four years ago I was wondering why the Venezuelan case had not reached the United Nations Security Council, and there were mechanisms for civil society to express itself in that world forum, even more so when those procedures had been the creation of a Venezuelan (see in Spanish La Formula Arria o cuando en la casa del herrero los cuchillos son de palo, at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2014/03/la-formula-arria-o-cuando-en-la-casa.html)  .

But while the world continues to turn, the Venezuelan political opposition looks at its navel. The Venezuelan case deepened its deterioration and without Venezuelan opposition intervention in the right instances, the problem escalated to the point of extreme gravity that we know today. And it had to be on the initiative of the United States in its rotating presidency of the Security Council, which will discuss - finally! - the gravity of the Venezuelan crisis in the context of the so-called Formula Arria at the United Nations next Monday, September 10, 2018 (see memorandum “Arria-Formula Meeting of Security Council: Venezuela as case Study of Corruption, Peace, and Security”, at

The memorandum states that under Formula Arria the corruption of Nicolás Maduro's regime and its involvement in illicit activities such as drug trafficking will be discussed, affecting the security of the Western Hemisphere: “As long as this predation continues, Venezuela will remain at risk for further violence and will continue undermining the stability of the region as millions of its people flee the crisis within its borders”.

According to the protocol of the Formula Arria meetings, participants from civil society, Member States and the press will listen to the speeches of the speakers on the subject followed by the speeches of members of the Security Council. It is and at the same time is not a formal meeting of the Security Council. The keynote speakers will be Mercedes de Freitas, Executive Director of Transparency Venezuela, and Marshall Billingslea, Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing, U.S. Department of the Treasury.

By listening to the well-founded interventions of organizations and personalities that have to do with the problem, the Security Council will then have a very precise perspective of the situation in order to make decisions. We await Dr. Diego Arria's intervention there. Diego Arria, former President of the United Nations Security Council, as one of the best acknowledged experts on the Venezuelan situation, and creator of the Formula that bears his name, who, because of his double condition of being a distinguished Venezuelan and a profound connoisseur of those diplomatic channels, for having handled similar situations in other countries within that same Security Council, will be constituted at that moment and in favour of its own country, as the best and most qualified representative to expose our tragedy before that important instance, so that the countries with the greatest power in the world can make a decision about what to do with Venezuela. If anyone can express to the world's powers the magnitude of our crisis and its implications for the security of the continent, it is Ambassador and State Secretary Diego Arria.

From there, decisions will be made without us. At that Formula Arria meeting, we will hear about the need to act as soon as possible to avoid greater evils to the region, but we Venezuelans will not be in the final decision. However, we could be, not in the decisions of the Security Council, but as main actors in the decision that is finally taken, in the form of a Government that officially and constitutionally represents Venezuelans in exile. However, that Government does not exist because those who have the responsibility for its materialization simply left that decision by omission in the hands of the circumstances, indirectly allowing Venezuela to deepen into a security risk for the world by continuing to tolerate criminals running the country.

For the world does not function at the speed of the decisions of Venezuelans. The decisions regarding our problem and the problem we are causing in the hemisphere will be made by others with or without us. On the one hand the party leaders in the National Assembly believe that the world will stop them from doing their opposition primaries next year to "elect" who will lead the official opposition of the MUD/Frente Amplio, while the TSJ in exile remains paralyzed defending itself from the inclement attacks from all over the world, because Capriles appeared on a list of corrupt in Maduro's sentence. Impossible greater imbecility.

And I ask myself: will the pot of opposition corruption be so big that everyone has undertaken it against the legitimate Supreme Court of Justice and not even a decision is made in favor of the poor people of Venezuela? Will it be possible that behind these attacks on the legitimate Supreme Court of Justice hide the panic that those who cover up Maduro's regime from the official opposition are discovered, and the ball of that thread is that investigation that the legitimate Supreme Court of Justice orders to the Public Ministry for Henrique Capriles, in Maduro's sentence?  That is the sad reality of Venezuelans while we all die of hunger when we are unable to buy the food and medicine we need for a murderous hyperinflation that scales minute by minute, with a regime that does not stop at the destruction of the country.

Hence, whether or not there is a National Emergency Government in exile will soon cease to be a difference as events unfold outside our control and at an unusual speed, without the intervention of anyone who can be called from the International Community at the moment of truth, to represent the legitimate interests of Venezuelans. Unless there are Venezuelans who represent us constitutionally outside the country, and who can get their hands on all that which will be unleashed in the coming weeks to bring order to the disaster being caused by the regime of Nicolás Maduro and his sopotocientos thieves in the Latin American region, decisions will be taken without us by those gentlemen sitting in the United Nations Security Council and the rest of the international community suffering from our problem. So, may God hold us confessed and protect this Land of Grace...

Caracas, September 8, 2018

Twitter:@laguana

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