• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • OAS head Luis Almagro (left) and Leopoldo Lopez (right)

    OAS head Luis Almagro (left) and Leopoldo Lopez (right) | Photo: Reuters

Published 27 August 2016
Opinion
Ugly motives drive Almagro’s hero worship of Lopez.

Organization of American States President Luis Almagro’s prostration before jailed Venezuelan politician Leopoldo Lopez keeps getting more outrageous.

RELATED:
Corporate Journalists Enraged as Venezuela Pays Bondholders

In an open later dated August 22 Almagro wrote:

“My dear friend Leopoldo:

To be sincere, when you were arrested, I was not sure you if you were a political prisoner. The government had converted lies into a regional truth. When I read the judgment against you, I grasped with each word the horror your country is living.

In one way or another you are both prisoners, victims of the ultimate expression of human misery, the denial of all rights, from the most elemental social and economic rights, to the most basic liberties.Your luck is so closely tied to your country’s that you will surely be free only when your country is. And if the government thinks it is possible to break you it is only because it erroneously believes it can break Venezuela.”

Almagro goes on to apologize for the presumption of calling Lopez a “friend” despite never having met him, but claims that he feels so deeply what Lopez and Venezuela are going through (Lopez and Venezuela are pretty much interchangeable to Almagro) that he can’t help it.

I’ve also read the judgment that supposedly ignited Almargo’s unbridled passion for Lopez/Venezuela. Lopez is not in jail because he is a vehement, high profile critic of the government. Anyone who is honest will admit that such people are all over Venezuela’s media and always have been during the “chavista” era (post-1999). Lopez is in jail because in February 2014, for a second time since 2002, he participated in an effort to violently overthrow the democratically elected government. 

Roberto Lovato, in a Foreign Policy piece that was an extremely rare break from the hagiography written about Lopez in the U.S. media, wrote in detail about Lopez’s participation in the April 2002 coup that installed a dictatorship under the business leader Pedro Carmona. Lopez was caught on video leading the “arrest” of a government minister, bragging about it on TV, and explaining that he was keeping “President Carmona” updated. During its two days in power, Carmona annulled the constitution voters had ratified and dismissed the Supreme Court and all elected officials. Twenty six people were killed during Carmona’s failed effort to put down the mass uprising that restored the elected government. The U.S. government funded groups involved in the coup before and after it took place. The New York Times was even more uninhibited in cheering the coup than the Bush administration. The response to the coup from Human Rights Watch, a group that passionately supports Lopez today, was absolutely pitiful.

RELATED:
The Economist's Latest Whoppers on Venezuela

Lopez should have received a lengthy prison term for what he did in April 2002 as he would have, at the very least, had he done this in the U.S. or in any other country. The case against him was irrefutable – and it would not have relied at all on problematic incitement laws as it has since he was arrested in 2014. Lopez benefited from an ill-advised amnesty that President Chavez granted numerous participants in the 2002 coup. Had Venezuelan continued along the path of economic growth and poverty reduction that it was on until the death of Chavez in 2013, the amnesty would not have been as big a problem. The worst elements in the opposition would have continued to weaken as was happening for a short period even after Chavez’s death. Consider that Juan Nagel, an opposition blogger who has been denouncing the Venezuelan government for over a decade, outraged many of his allies by praising Roberto Lovato’s expose of Lopez as “accomplished.”

Unfortunately, as Venezuela’s economic problems have worsened; Lopez’s faction has been emboldened, its tactics and objectives re-embraced by “moderate” factions, and, quite predictably, supported by all the same institutions outside Venezuela that responded so disgracefully to what happened in 2002.

Lopez called his supporters into the streets in February of 2014. The consequences were extremely predictable given what he did in 2002. Police officers and government supporters account for about half the protest-related deaths that resulted. His goal of ousting the government was never hidden. His claim that he wanted to non-violently overthrow the government should fool nobody. Lopez criticized former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles for calling off protests in 2013 after several people were killed by Capriles’ supporters. Lopez insists that Capriles would have become president in 2013 had he not called off those protests – the deaths, especially of those who support the government, were clearly as irrelevant to Lopez as they were in 2002.

Decent people - even if they believe Capriles’ trial was unfair and that the incitement laws used to convict him were too broad - should be repulsed by Almagro’s hero worship of Lopez. Almagro negates the humanity of the victims of the violent protests Lopez led in 2014, the coup he participated in April 2002, and the violent protests he urged Capriles to continue in 2013.

Almagro seems to wager that the U.S.-backed parliamentary coup in Brazil (which he politely argued against months ago but then shut up about) will allow him to become increasing brazen in his support for externally imposed regime change in Venezuela. His letter to Lopez is really a prostration before U.S. power which hopes to regain its lost influence in the region.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.