By Luis Manuel Aguana
It is very easy to fall into immediate
solutions that fit in the 240 characters of Twitter: "that the
International Community finishes activating the TIAR and ends the dictatorship
at once", or better yet, "let's organize civil society and provoke
enough force to displace the regime", are attractive phrases that move
followers in social networks -even journalists and important opinion makers-
and that of course generate expectations in a human conglomerate, desperate for
a solution that does not finish arriving. Politicians have been living for
years to manipulate those expectations. Who can compete with that? And in the
meantime time is passing and nothing is happening. Or if
it does, the regime gets stronger.
Nobody likes to face realities when they
become difficult, hence the escape of the mind tired of searching, find there
the fastest solution to support it. "This is the right thing to do,"
and that's it. Without any elaboration. Or better, if Dr. Mengano or the journalist
Sutano says it must be true. "Those are very informed and studied guys and
therefore they must know what they are saying." It's incredible how
legitimacy has been forged through social networks. In fact, legitimacy is now
measured by the number of followers. It reminds me of the old advice that if it
were up to the flies we would all eat garbage. The paradox is that we
Venezuelans are already eating out of the garbage because of this regime, which
in some ways confirms the logical inference. It may
sound harsh but it is so.
I am going to ask you a simple question: Why
do you think the countries that make up the international community, with the
United States at the head, are sanctioning the Maduro drug regime and its main
officials and accomplices? I think the unanimous answer would be "To make
him go away! The next question - not so obvious - that I would ask them would
be: And how would that be? Would they expect Maduro to get out of bed one day
and say "enough is enough, I'm leaving"? Would he call Diosdado, Padrino
López and the rest of the gang of thugs and say, "let's go, we can't take
it anymore"? It looks unlikely, doesn't it? Even stupid...
So what does the international community
expect with the regime's continued hanging? That some kind of negotiation will
be provoked, that Maduro will one day raise a white flag and ask for
negotiations? But negotiate what? Abandon the largest hostage site on the
planet? Cuba has been sanctioned and blocked for more than 60 years, and the
Cubans imprisoned by his regime are still there. Then the sanctions must have a
more concrete meaning: I am pressuring you to do something and you sit down
with me to negotiate that something.
Sometimes it is necessary to resort to simple
comparisons in order to better understand a complex reality. Even the studied
minds need them to see those realities that are there but sometimes are not
noticed. With the sanctions thus established against the regime, Venezuela can
be compared to a pressure cooker full of water -with all of us inside- put on a
low flame but without an escape valve... When a pot like that boils and the
pressure doesn't come out somewhere, only two things can happen: the pot bursts
(that will depend on its quality) or it cracks, letting out steam under
pressure.
In other words, if you set fire to a pot (the
penalties) and don't put an exhaust valve on it so that the force generated by
the fire can be channeled safely and productively to the side you want it to
move, the pot breaks anyway. In a violent way bursting at once, or by parts
cracking.
That is what should be understood by this
simple example here. In the case of the simile we are dealing with here, that
the pot would burst would be the ideas of secession from a note recently
published in PanamPost, and that public opinion of the networks has not given
it enough importance (see in Spanish Empezar a pensar en la división
territorial de Venezuela
https://es.panampost.com/asier-morales/2020/07/15/empezar-a-pensar-en-la-division-territorial-de-venezuela/).
To divide Venezuela is to
condemn it to the fate of Cuban communism forever because the most helpless -
who are always in the majority - would be grouped in magnitude on the side that
bears the brunt of the deal: Vietnam and North Korea. This kind of solution is
proposed when the pot is bursting... On the other hand, a crack in the pot's
structure would mean armed radicalization within the country, which would put
us on Syria's path sooner rather than later. That is, as long as we take for
granted the intentions of those who initiated armed actions, and that many
still, outside and inside the country, hope will continue, betting a better
luck in the future.
None of these results from applying fire to a
closed pressure cooker are good for Venezuela, even if they seem to be. And the
reason is mainly because without a pressure valve that in principle channels
the action of setting fire to the pot, we simply destroy it... That should be
understood more than anyone else by the Americans.
Our proposal of the electoral arbitration to
the OAS is that escape valve that has to be put in the pressure cooker (ver https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/apoyo-la-solicitud-de-la-sociedad-civil-venezolana-al-secretario-general-de-la-oea-para-la-aplicaci%C3%B3n-de-una-soluci%C3%B3n-humanitaria-de-caracter-electoral.html). All the fire that is put to the pot - plus sanctions - must be
directed at the regime's acceptance of this arbitration by the international
community. There is no point in continuing to sanction the regime without
pursuing a perfectly defined objective. It cannot be we continue to sanction
Maduro out', because it is explosive, and we are getting dangerously close to
the pot breaking or cracking, to the detriment of all of us in here. I have to
say, at the risk of being misunderstood, that it is very easy to say from the
outside that a pot without an exhaust valve is still on fire when you are not
inside. I wouldn't want to side with the new Latin American North Korea...
While the pot of Venezuela gets hotter with
the sanctions, Maduro does apply the fire well to the official opposition
because their pressure is very precise: "Either you go to elections or you
die”. That is why all of them, Enrique Capriles (PJ), Henry Ramos Allup (AD)
and Manuel Rosales (UNT) did meet with him to negotiate to go to that electoral
trap in December. But the sanctions with which the Americans threatened Henry
Ramos Allup broke the deal, which, paradoxically, did fulfill the regime,
bringing Bernabé Gutierrez's brother into the CNE (see in Spanish, La reunión
secreta entre Maduro y la “oposición” para acordar elecciones legislativas https://es.panampost.com/emmanuel-rincon/2020/07/14/las-reuniones-secretas-oposicion-chavismo-elecciones/).
Now Ramos Allup, in a new twist on the sanctions, has no choice but to
radicalize, attempting a new phase without the support of the regime as it has
been until now. We will see how he fares outside the collaborationist AD,
because he stayed in the worst of all worlds: he will no longer be the official
interpreter of the Adecos who were subdued by him for 20 years, but neither
will he be the official interpreter of the Adecos who sold out to the regime. He was completely left out...
The remaining months before December will define the next years of
Venezuela and the Venezuelans. Let's hope that the official opposition that
handles the relationship with the United States finishes understanding what is
at stake here, and that if they don't have a clear and immediate response for
the Venezuelans that will lead us to avoid the pressure cooker in Venezuela
from exploding or cracking, that at least they will help us with the
international community to put an escape valve on this pressure cooker?
Caracas, July
20, 2020
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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