Elections with sanctions are not free

Unitary Platform negotiator Gerardo Blyde is dismissed as lousy by such peers as Milos Alcalá Ambassador. No negotiator whatsoever is able to persuade Venezuelans to voluntarily endure and welcome further sanctions. Elimination of sanctions must be carried out as soon as possible, since they generate negative expectations on our economic growth, whose recovery we must promote. Dialogue must include economic sectors of Venezuela willing to promote investments in the country.

Issues of human rights are being duly processed by International Criminal Court, according to the leadership of Tamara Suju, who receives adequate funding for such activities. So the dialogue focuses on the need to lift sanctions to promote economic freedoms.

Career politicians issue a string of complaints regarding division of opposition. To achieve unity, we must project optimism and a vision of future. Career politicians desire to be awarded positions if their parties win the next electoral festivities, contravening citizen's desire to immediately access the international financial system, which vetoes us through sanctions.

International community extends beyond United States, European Union and United Kingdom. These countries are our main oil clients, eager to receive our supplies in this context of high crude oil prices. At the beginning of the Fourth Republic, Venezuela founded OPEC along with Arab countries. Our alliance met last weekend in Caracas and decided convenience of cutting oil supplies, to support prices tending to fall. Countries do not have friends, just interests. Our interest is to sell oil in optimal conditions. Chevron paves the way for oil companies in consuming countries to help us restore the industry, because it is also in their interest.

International community is fed up with political crisis in Venezuela. We foster emigration to overwhelm immigration services of the rest of the world. We wander from country to country, advising citizens of other countries not to vote for specific candidates in foreign elections. Our recommendations are generally not obeyed.

Venezuelan opposition does have a strategy: promoting maintenance of sanctions, and threatening that sanctions will be lifted if and only if Unitary Platform wins the elections. Thus elections won't be free, because they will condition the country's economic recovery to our voting for certain candidates. Parties do not know how to lose, so it is fashionable to loudly accuse fraud.

Rubén Rivero

Caracas, Venezuela

Fotografía Urbana Maracaibo. Zulima González, 40 Grados Bajo el Sol