The situation in Venezuela has become unbearable. Sanctions against its already crippled oil industry have left the now-impoverished country practically without income.
In the meantime, humanitarian goods including badly-needed food and medicine sit at the Colombian border because embattled President Nicolas Maduro, still backed by the armed forces, won’t let them in, although a plane with supplies from Puerto Rico reportedly got through Thursday evening.
The crisis is having a significant impact in the region, with a flotilla of tankers carrying a combined seven million barrels of Venezuelan oil pending in the Gulf of Mexico. American refiners may no longer pay state-run “Petroleos de Venezuela” PDVSA for the 500,000 barrels per day normally imported from Venezuela and must instead place the money on an escrow account.
The latter was yet being set up and is to fall under the control of opposition leader Juan Guaidó. He has been recognised as the troubled nation’s interim president by the US, Canada, Australia, much of South America and most Western European countries, among others.
But all that doesn’t help improve the social circumstances on the ground, which are not getting any better. In fact, the current standoff is only making living conditions progressively worse.
It would seem the writing is in any case on the wall, especially after Novo Banco in Portugal earlier this week blocked an attempt to transfer US $1.2 billion in Venezuelan government financial assets to banks in Uruguay.
Coincidentally or not, that’s where CARICOM Chairman/St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Timothy Harris led a delegation for meetings with Uruguay and Mexico, which have been reluctant to abandon the Maduro regime so far, on a way forward. They presented a “Montevideo Mechanism” based on dialogue, negotiations, commitments and implementation phase that was later discussed with representatives of the European Union (EU) and European Committee (EC), along with a possible technical mission to Caracas.
The Vatican has also – again – offered to mediate at the request of Maduro, but it appears that ship may have sailed, unless he agrees to new presidential elections pronto.
Something must give.
