President Nicolás Maduro is the only guarantee for peace in Venezuela, Ambassador Coromoto Godoy Calderón has said.
Calderón made the statement during an interview with the Sunday Guardian held at the Venezuelan embassy in Port-of-Spain yesterday. The interview came one day after a group of Venezuelan nationals living in Trinidad staged an anti-government demonstration outside the embassy.
Calderón said out of the 5,000 Venezuelan nationals living in this country, only 20 people joined the protest and that should be taken into consideration to show that they do not represent the majority.
There is an “aggressive global campaign” against Venezuela, Calderón said.
“The opposition forces are using economic sabotage to make the people hungry so that they will turn to violence and then blame the government,” Calderón said.
The intention is to paint Maduro as a “dictator” and accuse him of attacking his people, she said.
Calderón said this was the furthest thing from the truth.
“President Maduro loves Venezuelans and he is committed to his people and he also has a commitment to the legacy that President (Hugo) Chávez left,” she said,
“This was not out of the blue, Venezuelans did not wake up one day and decide let us kill each other this was part of a plan to derail the country.”
Forcing intervention from outside forces
Calderón said the aim was to create a negative image internationally and force intervention from outside forces.
Maduro, however, is the only one to combat this attempt, she said.
“The only guarantee for peace in Venezuela is the continuation of President Maduro in power because he is the only one with the political maturity, the sensibility, the wisdom to control these people who are power hungry,” she said.
Calderón said since 2014 there has been the advent of “street terrorists” known as the “Guarimbas”.
She said the “Guarimbas” orchestrated attacks in the country in an attempt to have Maduro ousted as the country’s president.
Elections are due in 2019.
The “Guarimbas” have returned again stronger than before and have been working quite effectively to create chaos in the country.
The “Guarimbas” attack citizens and Maduro gets the blame, Calderón said.
Calderón said an example of the “Guarimbas” trickery is that they fire-bombed a kindergarten with 54 children one night and the international media blamed the government for the attack.
Calderón said if you look at the “anti-government” protesters they come “ready to perform”.
“How is it possible that these demonstrators are using these costly masks and have back packs filled with stones and other items. They come ready for the show,” she said.
And the international media is playing right into their hands, she said.
Promoting chaos
Calderón said since last week opposition forces have been trying underhanded means to enter the embassy and “promote chaos” inside it.
“The police knew what was going on, the police came because they knew what was going to be happening (on Friday) and they came to protect us because we are a diplomatic mission and the government has to guarantee our safety but these people, if the police were not here, they would have attacked the embassy,” she said.
One of the things the Venezuelan government has taken flak for recently was the decision to withdraw from the Organization of American States (OAS).
Calderón said Venezuela had no other choice.
Calderón said the country was of the view that OAS is “ineligible to address matters that pertain to Venezuela since it has been used as an instrument for the arbitrary, partisan, disproportionate, malicious and distorted improprieties of its Secretary General Luis Almagro against Venezuela”.
As a result of this, Venezuela has convened an extraordinary meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) “without the undue and unlawful influence of the hegemonic power of the region”.
That meeting is scheduled to take place next Tuesday.
The issue that will be addressed is the “threats to the democratic constitutional order of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as well as the interventionist actions undermining its independence, sovereignty and self determination”.
