One man, one vote notanswer for Venezuela

THE EDITOR: I saw this week on my television screen an episode which, had it not been fraught with potential blood-letting and violence throughout our region, I would describe as “comical.”

I refer to the attendance of the US-imposed so-called interim president of Venezuela at a meeting in Bogota of the so-called Lima Group, with the vice president of the US in attendance. This was a meeting at which the “engineered” crisis in Venezuela was to be discussed.

Here was Juan Guaido being given a guard-of-honour welcome which would normally be accorded to a genuine, properly instituted head of state – an act which, I suppose, would have met the desire of the host president and his guests.

I must say that one does not have to be a “racial bigot” to observe the marked difference between the hordes who comprise Guaido’s throng on the one hand and those of President Nicolas Maduro on the other.

Is the ethnic composition not clear? For here one sees in the former what are predominantly the descendants of the “colonisers” while, on the other, what could be described as predominantly mulatto and people of aboriginal extraction. Needless to say, these latter are the “dispossessed” – a phenomenon which is to be found, even though in different degrees, throughout Latin America.

Therefore, given the above socio-economic scenario, I am of the view that calls for an election which are based on the Westminster-type one-man, one-vote criterion – a system which experience has shown cannot be transplanted successfully without underlying inherent precepts (such as relative homogeneity of the population) – is but a panacea and a self-serving safeguard which will not, by itself, lead to successful satisfying representative government. Indeed, it may even fan the flame of further discontent.

Other wide-ranging systems are required in order to meet the different built-in historical imperatives (including the noticeably wide income disparities) which have been a marked feature of the Venezuelan landscape.

ERROL OC CUPID, Tacarigua

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"One man, one vote notanswer for Venezuela"

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