There are growing complaints about the coronavirus vaccination program that has been promoting the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro since last weekend in Venezuela. In addition to the claims of the interim government of Juan Guaido and various sectors of Venezuelan society, there are also questions from former Chavista officials.

This is the case Rodrigo headHe is a fierce critic of Maduro, who served as Venezuela’s finance minister during the government of Hugo Chavez (between 2007 and 2008) and is currently a professor at the University of Zulia’s School of Economics.

After Chavista authorities prioritized people with a “national card” over the weekend, chaos reigned in recent days at many of the country’s vaccination centers, with large crowds and long queues registered. This apparent and dangerous chaos adds to questions about the lack of transparency about the amount of vaccines available in Venezuela and the irregular access to them.

We demand that there be access to vaccination based on the humanitarian principles of equality, human dignity and transparency. Vaccination is a safe strategy to reduce mortality and disease. And it is not done, all this is a show. They started a second stage and the turmoil was complete. In addition, it is added The huge distinction of the new outbreak is that if you don’t have a national card you can’t get vaccinated”, denounced Cabezas, in an interview with Infobae.

Along these lines, he pointed out that the main action in all countries of the world is to vaccinate health workers, and then the elderly and the population most vulnerable to pre-existing diseases. “Less is in Venezuela,” he said.

“It is an inhumane and discriminatory act, when the few vaccines have been allocated to ministers, representatives, governors, mayors and command structures of the ruling party and their families (…) the countries of the world never give priority to the ruling politicians. The 60-year-old economist criticized.

The former Chavista minister commented that in the state of Zulia, 16 doctors died in May due to the coronavirus. As with a large portion of health workers, they “didn’t have enough protection”, and they weren’t vaccinated either.

Weeks ago, Maduro’s dictatorship announced that 90% of health workers had already been vaccinated. But soon the Venezuelan Medical Federation denied this information. “Vaccines that arrived and diverted by the government to immunize ministers, representatives and politicians of Chavista, and left health workers helpless”said Douglas Leon Natera, president of FMV.

Cabezas also referred to Maduro’s “lies” and “false promises”. He noted in this regard that on November 15, 2020, the dictator said that in the first quarter of this year, 10 million of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine would arrive in the country, and he even announced the production of the immunization device in Venezuela. “Nothing came. They took this with a severe lack of responsibility when the right of Venezuelans to live is at stake. The state has a responsibility to protect Venezuelans.”

In fact, the exact number of vaccines that arrived is unknown, because the information provided by the Chavista authorities is contradictory. Days ago, Maduro announced the arrival of 1,300,000 vaccines from China to the country. However, The system did not display images of the arrival of that shipment as it did with others, and did not provide further information in this regard.

“It is a lie. 30 or 40,000 vaccines have arrived and … a picture on the plane, a landing photo, a photo back in Caracas, showing the can … 1,300,000 vaccines have arrived and there is no photo? It is clearly a big lie on the part of the dictatorship Juan Guaido said.

Before the announcement of this new batch of doses, Maduro had given details of receiving 930 thousand vaccines from Russia and China, while the Minister of Health, Carlos Alvarado, raised this number to 1480 thousand, without knowing any dates. The access of more than half a million more makes the difference or other data.

There is no reliable information on the number of vaccinations. The estimate, according to the government, is that as of May, 240,000 people have been vaccinated. They talked under pressure about a second stage of vaccination without seeing the arrival of new vaccines. Nobody knows the numbers. As well as not knowing the numbers of injured and dead. Cabezas added: “No one believes those who have been released by the government.”

Pictures that showed large crowds at various vaccination centers in the country raised questions about whether all these people would actually be able to be vaccinated, despite the lack of vaccines. “Many people have gone home without vaccination, and they are very upset,” the Venezuelan economist commented: “There was no list corresponding to the ruling party fighters.”

The former Minister of Chavista considered that work should be done In “Deal for Life”which guarantees access to the vaccine “on an equal basis and without political discrimination”. For this, he said, there must be an agreement between the Maduro regime, “and the democratic opposition led by Juan Guaido in Venezuela.” As he admitted, the National Assembly led by Guaido had taken “safe steps” to obtain vaccines from the COVAX platform, which is run by the World Health Organization (WHO). The goal, he noted, was “to ask the government to allow a deal to save lives.”

We need an agreement that has no political color because saving lives is not from the left, nor from the right, nor from the center. Cabezas, who also confirmed that in this way it will be possible to access vaccine donations promoted by the international community.

Joe Biden’s government announced this Thursday that the United States will immediately donate six million vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean. However, the US ambassador to Venezuela, James’ storyHe made it clear that this time Venezuela is not on the list of countries that will receive the doses “Because of the lack of transparency” in his vaccination plan.

Against this background, Cabezas warned that the epidemic situation in Venezuela is “tragic”: “There is a peak in the transmission of the virus, with an alarming increase in cases and deaths. The system is saturated.”

The Argentine government refused

As a former minister of Chávez, and “a member of the socialist movement since he was 13”, Cabezas questioned the Argentine government of Alberto Fernandez over its decision to withdraw the country’s support for the complaint to the International Criminal Court against Maduro’s dictatorship over human rights abuses in Venezuela.

“Being, a militant in the socialist movement, today in clear opposition to the so-called Bolivarian Revolution, it has caused us great disappointment because a progressive government like that of Argentina was able to withdraw accusations of rights violations before the International Criminal Court without assessing the number of victims who were there. All these years under the Maduro government.”commented.

With this in mind, he recalls the young people who were killed in 2017 in the framework of the protests against the regime, as well as those who were kidnapped and tortured by Chavista security forces. In addition, he noted that “a soldier (Rafael Acosta-Arevalo) died in court in his wheelchair as a result of the torture he had been subjected to, and (Fernando Albán’s) advisor was expelled from a police institution.”

“In an attempt to wash their faces now they realize that he was tortured,” Cabezas said, referring to recent statements by Chavista’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, who admitted that both Acosta Arevalo and Alban were killed by agents of the regime, many of whom, according to Saab, are on trial. . For the opposition, it is a simple maneuver by the dictatorship to show the international community changes in the structure of the police forces, especially after the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that demanded the dismantling of organizations such as the FAES and the DGCIM, accused of committing hundreds of extrajudicial executions.

The Venezuelan economist criticized the “ideology” of human rights in the region: “How can there be torture on the right, and torture on the left? We do not like violations of the right, such as those committed by Pinochet in Chile, but in the face of violations of the left, such as those committed by Maduro and Ortega in Nicaragua, we must be silent.”

“The left has moved towards the irresponsibility of giving automatic solidarity, without reviewing the facts, processes, contents and the claim that I make to that government (the government of Argentina), is that instead of listening to the other government, or to the interests perhaps it should have listened to the victims who have suffered Human rights violations “.

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