Venezuela’s political tug-of-war was yesterday to morph into a battle of the bands, with dueling government and opposition pop concerts ahead of a weekend showdown over the entry of badly needed food and medical aid.
The spectacle was to play out on opposite ends of a 300m bridge connecting Venezuela with Colombia. That span, called the Tienditas Bridge, is one of the conduits that opposition leader and self-declared interim Venezuelan president Juan Guaido wants to use to bring in humanitarian assistance to his economically crippled country.
The bridge has been blocked with freight containers left there by the military, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro refusing to allow aid in and arguing that it would be the first step toward a foreign invasion.
Photo: AFP
The opposition charity concert — called “Venezuela Aid Live” — organized by British billionaire Richard Branson is to be held in the Colombian border town of Cucuta.
Its stated goal is to raise US$100 million in donations. Stars from the Spanish-speaking world are scheduled to perform, and the presidents of Colombia, Chile and Paraguay have said that they would attend.
The government has not said who will perform on the Venezuelan end of the bridge — that concert’s slogan is “Hands Off Venezuela.”
“All the artists that are going to sing in Colombia must know that they are committing a crime. They are endorsing a military intervention,” Maduro said.
On Thursday, he ordered the closure of Venezuela’s border with Brazil — one of the main potential avenues for aid delivery — as part of the power struggle with Guaido over the aid.
Meanwhile, Guaido was traveling in a convoy of vehicles to personally pick up US aid being stockpiled on the Colombian border, defying Maduro’s military to stop him.
Guaido, who is recognized as interim president by more than 50 countries, left the capital, Caracas, in a convoy of vehicles with tinted windows for the 900km trip.
Guaido scored important symbolic boosts on Thursday, as 11 Venezuelan diplomats based in the US declared their support for him.
Maria Teresa Belandria, Guaido’s designated ambassador in Brazil, said that 100 tonnes of food, medicine and emergency kits were waiting to be trucked from Boa Vista to Pacaraima on the Venezuelan border.
Meanwhile, Maduro — mirroring Guaido’s move in an attempt to show his socialist government was able to look after its people — ordered a shipment of thousands of food boxes to be distributed to the needy along the Colombian border.
He also announced the arrival of another 7.5 tonnes of medicine and medical supplies from Russia.
Shipments of food and medicine for the crisis-stricken population have become a key focus of the power struggle between Maduro and Guaido.
Guaido, who has claimed that 300,000 people could die without an influx of aid, has said that he aims to rally 1 million volunteers to start bringing it in by today.
It remained unclear how he proposed to do so if the blockade continues, but experts have pointed to the porous 2,200km border, which is perforated by well-worn drug trafficking and contraband routes.
The opposition has said that teams of volunteers would spread out to transport aid through states bordering Colombia and Brazil, as well as from the city of Falcon in the north, which looks out to Curacao.
Colombian police have said that there are about 30 clandestine border crossings into Venezuela.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS