I opt for an honest and well balanced democracy

We hear quite some people being dissatisfied these days about our governments and democracy. Polarization, populism and fascism are increasing worrying trends in many western countries (as we also see even in the US!). In order to influence those to shift their thinking, let me share with you a story I recently received.

We lived in Venezuela from early 1991 to late 1995. Our son was three years of age when we moved there. Our daughter was born in Venezuela in 1992. The country was not thriving then, but, as the story below illustrates, a hundred times better than today. A few years after we left, left extremist Hugo Chavez was elected in 1999 and he remained president till he died in 2013. He was succeeded by his disciple Nicolás Maduro. Where Chaves already ruined the country, Maduro finished off what was left, and today he is still in charge to burn it down. The government is corrupt but looks rather well after themselves and the country is in the worst state imaginable. On and off I am still in touch with an ex-colleague. This was her story she recently sent me: 

“Hi Rob, we are still alive, with lots of anger, sadness and lots of crying. I lost my mom on April 6th 2020, just because I could not get gasoline or a neighbor with a car with gasoline to take her to a clinic. She had a really high fever (not corona) and we run out of aspirin, so sadly she died. But that is not all, we could not bury her within the normal time, because the funeral car did not have the permission to fill-up with gasoline, so we waited for five days. And not only that, when we went to the cemetery, they buried my mom but did not cover the grave where they buried her since May, because they did not have the personnel to do the job. So, as we, many people feel the same anger, right now we have become the poorest country in the world, the salary is less than 0.75$ and hour. Many people are dying because we cannot buy food, we make only one, almost full meal, and is basically, arepa (note: corn meal) with white cheese, butter, 1 fried egg, and water, then at night if they turn on the power, just toasted bread with butter, if no power, you eat the bread cold. I never thought we would ever live in a terrible situation like this. We used to listen to Cubans talking about the way they were living, I never realized it would happen to us. If you have a small electric stove (most of them ‘made in China’), they do not last long, because most of the houses are not built to have the appropriate electrical set-up, the wiring is installed for 110 volts and the stove are built for 120 volts, so the Chinese ones burn in less than a month. If there is no power, there is also no water. They turn off the power 2 to 3 times a day, each time it could last 7-9 hours, sometimes, the power is turned on (suppose) at 1 pm, then turned off at 2 pm, then again on at 4 pm, so that way most electric equipment is blown. I lost my freezer, the air conditioner and laundry machine. And no way to fix it, because the cost are far too high. It is almost impossible to get personal hygiene goods because hygiene products are extremely expensive. This is like living in hell, you are not safe on the street, not only because of corona, but because of the police and military, they are the ones that have control of everything! I miss my old Venezuela. We pray EVERYDAY for this government to leave very soon, so we will be free. I NEVER dreamed to be in such a situation, I cannot imagine such evil people. They really seem to enjoy what they do. Diosdado Cabello said the other day just before the (corrupt) parliamentary elections in December: "Whoever does not vote, does not eat". How can someone play with the hunger of the people? People are REALLY eating from trash. It is exhausting the way we are living. Yesterday we turned the electric stove and it short circuited. The houses are too old, and they were not build to support electric stove/kitchen and that resulted in half of the house without power. Tomorrow I will ask the guard to see if he could help me without charging me because all electric repairs are too expensive, we are worse of than Cuba, everything gets damaged, because the small amount of money that we receive from Social Security, we save it to buy meal with cheese. I wish I could get my North American visa and could go to USA, but we have paid twice to get the visa, but the people disappeared with the money. If I do get it, I have the offer from the people I worked for (before you came here) to live with them in Texas, USA. I worked for a decent American company and my boss at the time introduced me to the site manager of Cargill after he sold his company and returned to the US. I then worked for him and for you. Cargill just sold the company, they are leaving Venezuela, I talked to the Sales Director and he told me that the government simply claimed many buildings that belonged to Cargill (note: Cargill is the company she and I worked for at the time we lived in Venezuela) and did not pay for them. It is too sad, not only to us, but to our kids, we always worked hard and try to for them to have a better life than what you have yourself, but there is no chance. My oldest son is studying to become a Chemical Engineer, he is a year ahead, but every day he says to me: “Mom, I want to go, I do not care about my degree". At one point I was going for San Antonio, Texas, before my mom came back to Maracay, but she needed the care of a baby, and I could not say no to my brother when he asked me to take care of her. I had everything ready to go, and the people in the US let me know they were going to pay for my kids’ university expenses, but I lost the money with two guys who were going to get me the American Visa, plus I had to decide whether to take care of my mom or go, so I decided not to pursue this time. But, now it would even be a bigger challenge trying to leave if you do not have a visa. The other places to go would be Colombia, Brazil, and other Latin-American countries, I pray to God to open us the right doors so we could find the way to go.”

Venezuela is the OPEC-country with the biggest oil reserve. No gasoline available? They do have plenty, plus a fantastic amount of other resources where many countries would be jealous of. But an extreme corrupt left-wing government is messing it up completely.

I am lucky and grateful to live in the Netherlands and the government we have. And I hope that people with extremist thoughts start to realize this also. Right, left, center politics, all fine! But extremists on either end, fascists, and parties that exclude, and/or discriminate parts of the population, lead to disaster. Please, let us realise that. Although seldom recognised, the European Union, where we are part of, has brought us peace, security, freedom and prosperity, as Rob Wijnberg recently perfectly explained in De Correspondent. I wish that more people will see this and value our fortune.