The elephants, the grass and the prize

Mr Maduro, 56, continues to cling to power

Nicholas Maduro's inexcusable tyranny is the more revolting considering that after running Venezuela aground, he refuses to go. The well-fed Maduro has brought fear, violence, pain and hunger to his country. Three million Venezuelans have fled their homeland in recent years. The IMF has announced that inflation will hit 10 million per cent this year.




The long-suffering people of the Latin American country had hoped to vote out the Marxist president at the last presidential election in May, 2018. For reasons that only he could explain, Maduro won the election by landslide.



The result meant that he had the 'mandate' to rule the country for another six years. Despite his show of bravura, it was fairly easy to see that Maduro had rigged the election massively. The chances were that the battered citizens of Venezuela could not have re-elected the leftist thug knowing that their sufferings would only continue.



Juan Guaido, Venezuela's opposition leader

Maduro shrugged off international condemnation and allegations of vote buying and electoral fraud to remain at the helm in his crisis-stricken nation. He also fiercely refused to heed calls to conduct new elections. It was this that led to opposition leader and head of congress Juan Guaido swearing himself in as interim president with the support of the US and major Latin American countries Brazil, Argentina and others. Britan and several EU countries have since joined in to oppose the embattled sit-tight Maduro.









There is now a real impasse as China, Russia and some other countries are lining up behind the unrepentant, discredited Maduro. Venezuela has thus become the latest ideological battleground. Some people saw this coming.







There is a common saying that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. In this case, the two elephants that seemed to have locked horns in Venezuela are the two ideologies that are contesting for supremacy in the political firmament of our planet. The people can be described as the grass while the presidency of the oil-rich country is the prize.