Maduro to Jail Opposition Leader Outside Caracas
HAVANA TIMES (dpa) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, said today that opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who surrendered Tuesday to authorities after being blamed for the recent violence in the country, will be held in a prison outside Caracas, claiming it is to “save” his life.
Maduro said Lopez will be accompanied by the head of the National Assembly (Congress) , Diosdado Cabello, to the place of detention, which has not been revealed.
“Right now comrade Cabello is driving Leopoldo López in his car, taking him to a prison outside Caracas to face justice,” said Maduro adding: “we are looking after the life of Leopoldo López, ”
At a rally near the presidential palace in Caracas, on the occasion of the signing of an employment contract with the oil industry workers, Maduro said rightwingers in Miami mobilized “strange groups ” when they learned that Lopez would turn himself in.
“They sought to kill him to take us to a civil war. But we are decent people we don’t hate anybody,” he said.
Maduro added that Cabello spoke with the Lopez’s family, to get him to turn himself in and safeguard his life.
The president said Lopez must be brought to justice for his calls to “sedition” against his government made in recent weeks, seeking to create a crisis to oust him from office by force.
“Today events unfolded peacefully up to now, with the head of Venezuelan right wing fascists turning himself in. He must respond to the prosecutor for his calls for sedition and ignoring the Constitution,” said Maduro.
López surrendered today to authorities amid an opposition rally at Brion Square in the east of the city, after the government accused him of instigating violence on Wednesday after an opposition march to the Attorney General’s office left three dead and 66 wounded.
The delivery of the leader to the police resulted in a mobilization of his supporters in the east of the city, causing chaos and gridlock.
Venezuela’s economic situation is dire:
The country’s international reserves have dwindled to $21 billion. Of that, $12 billion is in the form of gold that is claimed by China as security for more than $30 billion in loans made in the last two years. Because Venezuela is not keeping up with oil deliveries to service that Chinese debt, the gold cannot be touched.
Another $7.5 billion of the reserves is in the form of bonds issued by Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Apparently that amount used to be held in U.S. Treasury bonds, but the regime traded these for useless paper from some of the region’s most insolvent countries. Seriously: who in their right mind buys bonds from Cuba?
These bonds cannot be liquidated for cash because they are worth less than their face value, making their sale illegal under Venezuelan law. Thus, what is left in the bank is less than a half-billion dollars, which would cover the cost of about two weeks worth of imports.
Two weeks of essential imports. After that, what happens next? What will happen when the Venezuelan oil company is forced to chose between delivering to China the oil they paid for, or will they send the oil to Cuba? What will Havana do when Venezuela shuts off the cheap oil supply?
Will Maduro arrest some more opposition members? Will he order his National Guard out to shoot some more students? What will the increasingly disillusioned armed forces do when they see their country torn apart?
I love listening to this guy and his conspiracy theories. For every problem that Venezuela has, there is a conspiracy. …And it doesn’t help that every time there is a problem Maduro expels US diplomats. At this rate Maduro will run out of diplomats much sooner than he will run out of problems.
Democracy is dying in Venezuela. The radical left is attempting to install a totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship. Maduro’s political mentors are pulling the strings.
venezuela is on the road to serfdom.
How does a country of only 30 million people with oil revenues of as much as 100 billion dollars per year find itself in such dire straits? We are witness to how NOT to run a country.