IF there is a free and fair election in Cuba today, the rival to the Communist Party will win. Generations of Cubans have grown up with justified anti-American sentiments because they saw how successive American presidents bullied their country.

The Castro brothers have milked those sentiments until the cow died. As early as 1983 when I was in Grenada, Cubans building the airport in Grenada, told me they dreamt of changes away from the dynasty of the Castro brothers. I think in later life, Fidel began to live as a delusional, faded rock star.

He couldn’t accept that the Fidel aura of the 1960s had evaporated. The Castro brothers have for decades told the Cuban people that the cause of Cuban’s stultified economy was the American embargo. But Castro has never held a referendum on anything in Cuba since he came to power in 1959. So he didn’t know if the Cuban people wanted a change.
President Maduro is less fortunate than the Cuban brothers. He has to call a general election next year that he will lose. This explains his December referendum on the Essequibo. The Chavez charisma in Venezuela died when Chavez died. What Maduro has done since then is to rightfully blame successive American governments for the prolonged crises.
Wanting to remove Maduro, the Americans and their EU partners put severe sanctions on Maduro which were immoral and still are. It is similar to the embargo against Fidel after 1959. But as sanctions bite, after decades of living in deprivations people reach a breaking point. This is when Castro was no longer Cuba’s Fidel.

The world has every right to denounce what the US and EU did to Venezuela but the question in Venezuela is ‘can those sentiments help Maduro win the election next year?’ The Chinese and Russians and other big Third World states have enabled Venezuela to survive but still the issue facing the world is can Maduro win the election next year?
For me, I think he will lose because life in Venezuela is harsh, but we must not forget it was brought about because of traditional American undermining of Third World countries that they cannot control. Maduro has planned his referendum on the Essequibo for two reasons. One is that he has been forced by the Americans to negotiate a covenant with the opposition parties in exchange for easing of sanctions.

This is the identical replica of Guyana in 1987. The Americans agreed to IMF bankrolling Guyana on the condition that the election system must be opened up. President Hoyte agreed and he lost. The second reason for the Essequibo referendum is as old as the world itself. Create a foreign war when your power is weak and the nation in jingoistic fashion will rally around you. President Biden in the US has done exactly that. Biden hopes to win re-election because of his extreme embrace of Israeli aggression.
Maduro will be facing Maria Machado in the election next year. She is way ahead of all opposition candidates and seems to have the potential to beat Maduro. She is banned from running for presidential office by the Maduro Government but in the recent covenant with the Americans, he may be pressured to lift the ban on her.
Maduro figures that if he uses the Essequibo bandwagon it will generate jingoistic emotions as we are now seeing in the US with Biden’s Israeli thing and believes the Venezuelans will turn to him and give him an election victory.

The similarity with Cuba is surreal. Cubans hated what the Americans did to them. But they became so psychologically battered that they wanted a change from the communist party. That did not come because they cannot vote out the communist party.

The Essequibo referendum if it is won by Maduro will not catapult him to victory. The Venezuelan people are too psychologically drained from the American sanction that they will not have the mental capacity to vote for Maduro. Guyana has every right to be preoccupied with the referendum and the Guyanese people need to mobilise world leaders and world opinion on the Maduro madness. Guyana just cannot take for granted that the Essequibo referendum is an election ploy.

Maduro is capable of doing crazy things to win the election next year. The Essequibo referendum is a manifestation of one of the oldest tales in international relations where fading leaders stir up foreign trouble to stay in power. Despite the world’s attention on the Middle East, Guyana must begin the diplomatic war against Maduro ASAP.