There are reasons why there is huge, huge, massive discontent in Venezuela in relation to the Maduro government. The crises that the Venezuelan people are facing are, to a great extent, the responsibility of this government, that has been extremely corrupt, inefficient, and has become increasingly repressive. But that in no way justifies a U.S. military intervention or this attempt to strangle the Venezuelan economy, which is of course doing much [more] harm to the Venezuelan people than to the Venezuelan government.
So, in this situation, where today, I would say, a majority of the people in Venezuela reject the Maduro government, and, on the other hand, a great majority also reject U.S. intervention, we need a negotiation that opens the way for Venezuelans to decide by themselves. And this is the option of both this negotiation with some international backing, on one hand, and this referendum that we are calling for, from the platform and other groups in Venezuela that think that the biggest threat for Venezuelans today is the threat of this escalation of violence, the possibility of a civil war and the possibility, that has been announced again and again, of a military intervention by the United States government.
So, the need for some sort of negotiation, for putting a stop to this escalation, and to put the blame, on one hand, on Maduro’s responsibility for having, throughout this six years of government, created such an incredible collapse of the Venezuelan economy—today, the economy is half of what it used to be when Maduro came to power, and this is basically the government’s responsibility. U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela, started a year and a half ago, around mid-2017. But the crisis came from way before. U.S. sanctions have deepened the crisis, but they are not the main cause of the crisis. The main cause of the crisis is ineptitude and massive corruption by the Maduro government.
So, we in Venezuela are faced with these two evils, with these two confronting enemies that have the Venezuelan people in between, paying for their own ineptitude, for their own violence, for their own political purpose, which are not the purposes of the Venezuelan population. We need to have some sort of pressure on the U.S. government to stop this level of intervention, this threat of military intervention. And we have to call on the Maduro government to be willing to open up a negotiation, because there are a lot of reasons why people in Venezuela don’t really trust Maduro when he calls about his willingness to negotiate, because he always says the same thing. But when negotiations are always carried out, they are negotiations in which he has not been willing to do anything. He hasn’t been willing to cede on any one basic issue.
AMY GOODMAN: Edgardo Lander, I want to thank you—
EDGARDO LANDER: The Venezuela government today is—
AMY GOODMAN: —for being with us. Edgardo is a sociologist, speaking to us from Caracas, Venezuela, where he’s part of the Citizen’s Platform in Defense of the Constitution, a retired professor at Central University of Venezuela.
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And so it goes on Democracy Now. Don't look for Edgardo Lander to be a regular.
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