By
Luis Manuel Aguana
In
my opinion, we have not given enough of the message that the best way
to fight COVID-19 in Venezuela is to get out of Maduro. But if we now
add that international factors such as the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, calling for the lifting of sanctions
against the Maduro regime (see
in Spanish
Bachelet pide que se atenúen las sanciones económicas a Cuba y
Venezuela para poder enfrentar el coronavirus, en
https://news.un.org/es/audio/2020/03/1471662),
are applying an unacceptable blackmail to us Venezuelans: that
sanctions must be set aside in order to address this crisis. AND THAT
IS UNACCEPTABLE.
Why
would that virus be any different from the mortality that was already
occurring and continues to occur every day in Venezuela as a result
of a tyranny that has not accepted international humanitarian aid?
What makes the death of a child from sepsis different because he
cannot be operated on in a public hospital from simple appendicitis
because there is no anesthesia or anesthesiologist and his death from
that new virus? Absolutely nothing! In fact I can say that as
Venezuela was before this pandemic appeared, COVID-19 is the least of
our worries. That's how serious Maduro's pandemic and his criminals
must be understood. The socialist Michelle Bachelet should have
understood that by now.
Then
it will be up to Maduro's military and those who hold him in power to
deal with the number of deaths that will have to start coming out at
any moment, and where his relatives will be as well. And they will
have to decide among themselves whether they have a chance to fight
the pandemic better for international aid, or die supporting the
regime. That virus won't make any difference to the rest of us who
live here. If a Venezuelan gets sick from ANYTHING he is certain to
die with and without COVID-19 in any hospital, because no one in
Venezuela has health insurance to go to a private clinic. Private
health insurance has disappeared from the budgets of most
Venezuelans. We simply can't afford it.
So,
the coronavirus comes? What difference does it make? But now Bachelet
is asking the world to suspend the sanctions so that Maduro can
continue doing what he does best: subjugating the population to
enrich himself with what's left of Venezuela. I can't speak for the
rest of the Venezuelan people, but I'd prefer then that they continue
to be hanged, because any aid administered by those criminals will
not be reflected in changes to the health systems.
But
the most regrettable thing is not that Bachelet, an out-and-out
communist who has infiltrated the world's human rights at the UN, is
asking for the regime, but rather that an "opponent" like
Henrique Capriles is doing so, who is now proposing "some kind
of agreement" "to overcome the pandemic with the forces
that both parties have to offer (see
in Spanish
Capriles también
llama a un acuerdo nacional ante el COVID-19, en
https://www.panorama.com.ve/politicayeconomia/Capriles-tambien-llama-a-un-acuerdo-nacional-ante-el-Covid-19-20200324-0065.html).
So does Henry Falcon, another pseudo-opposition: "It is time for
the unity of the nation, because it is right. We must put aside
hatred, division and group interests to take on the national ones".
I really don't know what is worse, if a communist outside trying to
ease the sanctions imposed on these criminals, or some
collaborationists inside trying to work with the regime to achieve
this.
I
suppose that Capriles must have understood by now that the cost of
not having taken a risk on April 15, 2013, when he alleged "the
possible deaths" that would cause the CNE to march to collect an
electoral victory, sending everyone to "dance salsa and play
casseroles," turned out to be today, after all the deaths caused
and provoked by Maduro, infinitely less than not having done so. That
was the moment that the Bolivian leaders did not lose with the
electoral fraud of Evo Morales. These are the toxic leaders from whom
we Venezuelans must move away, beyond the plague of the coronavirus.
Some
of you at this point will be saying "this is what you want then
the virus to kill us", giving Bachelet and Capriles the reason
out of desperation. To them I will say: be very careful not to
confuse gymnastics with magnesia. Desperation is the worst counselor.
Dismantling sanctions that were never intended to prevent the entry
of food and medicine into the country will not solve the country's
health crisis. Aid to help public hospitals is still in place and
Maduro has prevented it and is still preventing it in the midst of
the COVID-19 pandemic. This aid is not being paid by the regime but
by the international community, and it is fully available. Why hasn't
it come in yet? Ask the Maduro regime: Who is violating the human
rights of Venezuelans? Who is Bachelet speaking for, the regime or
the Venezuelans?
Capriles
presents a situation of political polarization that exists only in
his mind. here is no controlling political leadership in the country
to hold hands with to work together. Capriles has not yet understood
(or wanted to understand?) that on the other side there is a mafia of
dangerous criminals, involved in crimes against humanity, capable of
anything to stay in power, including murder. It is not that we can
make a "truce" between equal forces. NO. Here is a
narco-criminal mafia that is subjugating the human rights of a
defenseless, hungry and sick population. That is the situation. And
if you have not yet understood this as a political leader, then let
the Venezuelan political scene come out at once, because those who do
not help are in the way. He's done enough damage for a generation in
2013.
We
Venezuelans cannot fall into that false dilemma of "it's either
the regime or the pandemic". The regime is one thing and the
pandemic is another. We are not in the best position to fight it
because the regime has destroyed the health of the Venezuelan people.
But it is not by strengthening it, "uniting" with it or
asking them to take away the only thing that has diminished them in
all these years that we will manage to defeat it. The sanctions are a
kind of chemotherapy for a body with cancer. It is not by removing
the treatment that we will manage to eliminate the cancer cells. The
regimen has to go so that we can have a better chance of beating the
virus.
But
if the body still can't take it, I'd rather have an honorable death
fighting to the end against cancer than let it fear death and accept
to live with it. I will say then as The Liberator in his letter to
General Urdaneta before dying in Santa Marta: "I prefer death to
medicine". And yet never before has a death been so honorable as
his...
Caracas,
March 25, 2020
Email:
luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario