MSJ, IR specialist agree with call to lift sanctions against Venezuela

Movement for Social Justice leader David Abdulah said he is pleased with Dr Keith Rowley's call for the US to lift sanctions on Venezuela.

He said this was one of the issues the MSJ and the Assembly of Caribbean People had addressed in an open letter sent to Caricom heads of government in January, calling for Caricom to engage with the Biden administration to tackle issues of concern to Caribbean people.

In another open letter on February 22, the MSJ said, “We look forward to this engagement also resulting in Caricom strongly advocating for the end to the unilateral, illegitimate and extremely punitive sanctions against Venezuela, which the assembly has been calling for for some time."

Dr Anthony Gonzales, former director of the Institute of International Relations at UWI, said this is an opportunity for the US to try a new approach to dealing with the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

“The isolation and sanctions approach has not worked, as the regime has become entrenched and is certainly not being overthrown. That approach has led to further economic depression, which has led to a lot of people leaving and we see where almost five and a half to six million are refugees, and TT is one of those (countries) that is suffering from that.

"Countries tend to buckle down, when you take these kinds of hard sanctions against them, they take a lot of national pride in defying the US and showing that they can survive even though the sanctions have been imposed on them, in a sense feeding a kind of nationalism there that we can do without.”

Gonzales added, “Maybe there could be a different approach to the opposition, one which recognises all opposition groups without identifying one particular person, brings them to negotiate with Maduro and engage in some new discussions and negotiation which may come up with some kind of formula, which may be agreeable to all the stakeholders, including the military, and they will find some kind of way out of that.”

He said the US could also look at easing the sanctions to some extent.

“By that, I mean one could leave the individual sanctions, that is to say sanctions against individuals in the government, and lift those that tend to affect the masses of the people. A lot of these oil sanctions are hurting a lot. Because the government is not able to export oil, it is losing foreign exchange and, as such, it cannot provide some of the basics – the food and the medicine that people are hoping to get. And these are the basic things that cause people to migrate when they can’t get access to some of the basic things and they try to go into neighbouring countries like TT to get access to these things.”

Gonzales said it was good to see that the Joe Biden administration did not make grand public statements and threats like the Donald Trump administration.

“But we have to wait and see. Maybe the Biden administration is trying to put together a coherent policy and may be engaging in talks in the background to see what can happen. It’s difficult to talk about, as Biden has only been there a month and you have to give these things some time.”