America’s flip flopping has exacerbated Venezuela’s tragedy

Amid New Year celebrations, and a tide of high-profile obituaries, you might have missed something small and far away, but nonetheless significant. The opposition in Venezuela has dissolved its government-in-pretence. By 72 votes to 29, the country’s national assembly voted its parallel government out of existence.  

Juan Guaidó can no longer say that he is Venezuela’s legitimate president-in-waiting. Venezuela has, for many years, been a basket case. A country with immense natural resources and an energetic population, it has long languished in poverty. Many have starved, millions have fled, disease and distemper have stalked the land – and, as always in dictatorial societies where economic woes translate into popular discontent, savage brutality has been issued down from on high.  

This brutality meant baton charges and tear gas for protestors, murder for perceived political enemies, and, in political terms, the complete repudiation of the Venezuelan constitution by the country’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro.