Venezuela alleged on Tuesday that former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez had joined a plot of ultraconservatives to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s embattled government.
Maduro, whose country is in an economic freefall after adopting a government-run economy while oil prices slide, said the leftist Spanish statesman had signed up with a group of far-right plotters in Spain, Colombia and the US.
Gonzalez, who was in power from 1982 to 1996, presided over modernization in Spain in which social welfare was a top priority, and economic growth was left to markets and EU subsidies.
“Now they’ve got Felipe Gonzalez, who has just signed on openly — bringing in a great big salary in euros — to the campaign against Venezuela, to support a coup in Venezuela, the coup against me,” Maduro alleged in his weekly address on state media.
Havana-allied Maduro, in remarks similar to those often made by Cuban leaders on state media, further charged that the far-right coup plotters “don’t know what our constitution says, and they are trying to cause foreign intervention in Venezuela.”
Worse, Maduro charged that in the past, his political godfather, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, had “thrown out” Gonzalez when he came to Caracas to “propose dirty business,” such as selling off telecoms firm Cantv “to a consortium that he [Gonzalez] was representing.”
On Monday, a source close to Gonzalez told reporters that the former Spanish prime minister, a lawyer by training, would represent jailed members of the Venezuelan opposition, Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, at their families’ request.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Spain’s Cadena Ser on Tuesday, Gonzalez said that Venezuela’s government “is failing seriously on two issues that are very basic to a state being able to function,” referring to the economy and lack of public safety.
Maduro recently accused Washington of backing an opposition plot to overthrow him in a coup that he says would have involved bombing the presidential palace. The US government has dismissed the charges as baseless.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was