A few weeks ago Venezuela’s duly elected dictator El Caudillo Hugo Chavez was reported by be in grave condition and had once again gone over to Cuba to receive medical treatment including chemotherapy , during this time there was great speculation on whether or not he would actually make it out and even if he does would he still be able to carry out his duties as president, it was even reported in the news that he had designated a successor should he be unable to carry on, the last news item regarding Chavez stated that he was back in Venezuela and recovering, much to the relief of his allies and the annoyance of his enemies. Throughout this whole scenario there were tensions and uncertainty not only in Venezuela but also in other places including Jamaica and the Caribbean, this of course is due to one thing in particular: Petro Caribe
The Petro Caribe deal is a driving pillar of Venezuela’s foreign policy in the Caribbean region since Chavez first took office, the agreements sets out conditions for the provision of Venezuelan oil to signatories of the agreement under which Caribbean countries would be able to purchase oil at 5% -50% of market price up front while the remainder would be payable over 25 year period with a 1% per annum interest rate. Sounds good right, of course being realists many Caribbean leaders decided to sign the agreement, so now we are getting oil at a reduced rate, which we don’t have to be worry about paying for at the moment, everything should be OK right? So why then do I still feel uneasy about this deal?
Maybe it’s because I think that Chavez is not just being benevolent or giving out of the goodness of his heart but rather he has an ulterior motive, like all of his other policies, the Petro Caribe is filled with overtones of Bolivarianism, ever since he first came to office Chavez has justified everything he has done by claiming that it’s all a part of the Bolivarian revolution, it’s the reason why he is so critical of the United States and other western countries which he sees as neo-colonizers, it’s why he had the Venezuelan constitution altered to remove term limits on his presidency, it’s the reason he has close relations with Iran and other fundamentalist Islamic states and that’s why he urged the creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (also called ALBA) to rival other efforts at continental integration such as MERCUSUR or to halt the FTAA agreement from being signed.
The Petro Caribe is simply an attempt by Chavez to gain a foothold in the Caribbean and so far he seems to succeeding, three Commonwealth Caribbean countries are already ALBA members and he’s still trying to get the rest of us to sign up. When talking Caribbean –Venezuela relations Chavez has no better friend that Vincentian Prime Minister Comrade Ralph Gonsalves, a very shady character who tries to imitate the likes of Chavez and Fidel Castro, he even tried to have the constitution amended to turn St Vincent and the Grenadines into a socialist republic with himself President and Dictator fortunately he was defeated in a referendum (Her Majesty should have revoked his Prime Ministerial appointment and imprisoned him for this gross act of attempted treason), most Caribbean leaders while not idolizing Chavez still cannot see him for what he really is.
The Petro Caribe deal is not a generous arrangement as some persons think but rather a devious
attempt by the Chavez regime to make us economically dependent on him for energy and in the long term to place us in a state of high indebtedness to his country , Petro Caribe is not stable but is dependent a Chavez himself, something that was clearly demonstrated last week and prior to that during the Venezuelan Presidential elections earlier this year when the opposition rival Henrique Capriles promised to repeal the agreement if elected which would have left the Caribbean in deep trouble of high debt to Venezuela while having to find a new energy partner, sure we can breathe a sigh of relief for now because the deal deems safe at present but Comrade Hugo won’t be around forever, what will they do when he’s gone.
Hugo Chavez is nothing if not a master of lies and propaganda, his so called new-found Bolivarian philosophy is nothing more than another name for his own version of communism to impose his own ideas not only on the people of Venezuela but also on the rest of Latin America and even the Caribbean, other Latin Caudillos such as Evil (ahem I mean Evo) Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Christine Kitchener from Argentina and who could forget Hugo’s best friend Raul Castro in Cuba are all part of it , of course not everyone in the region has bought into Chavez’s ridiculous ideas, thank God for sensible leadership in Chile and Brazil
Prime Ministers in the Commonwealth Caribbean would do well to take heed, the writing is on the wall, Venezuela is NOT our friend one only has to wait to see what will happen after El Caudillo Chavez exits the scene as he will eventually have to like all other leftist dictators whether he wants to or not and his so called Bolivarian revolution is consigned to the dustbin of history
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