Hours before U.S. President Donald Trump revealed America’s intention to ‘assume control of Venezuela’ in the short (even medium) term, Portugal’s presidential candidates (two weeks shy of the elections on January 18) were giving their ‘first impressions’ of last night’s military assault on Caracas.
Only CHEGA’s André Ventura saw anything positive in the attack and exfiltration of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
All 10 others were critical, and in some cases cautious – with the PS candidate António José Seguro questioning which country might be next. (This was actually answered later in the day by President Trump himself, who mentioned that Cuba could well be the next country in which the United States feels it must intervene).
But before the press conference, given late afternoon at the president’s Mar-a-Lago home, Portugal’s aspirant heads of state were putting their opinions very much on the line – and for voters this will have been interesting. Who was prepared to put their head above the parapet and say exactly what they felt?
It didn’t appear to be Luís Marques Mendes – the PSD candidate whose ethos is ‘measured caution’. The 68-year-old said it was “too early to draw conclusions about the nature of the American intervention” and that in the absence of further details he wanted to “emphasise” his concern for the Portuguese community in the country: “It is important to remember that the European Union has never recognised the elections in Venezuela,” he added.
It was a ‘safe’ answer.
The further left candidates went, the greater the concern they expressed – and the sense of outrage that international law has been sidelined completely – while ‘independent candidate’, Henrique Gouveia e Melo (a man who spent his professional career in military service) went somehow ‘deeper’, posting online: “I have been warning about this reality for a long time. The world is changing rapidly and international instability has worsened with profound changes in the global system. Portugal is in the right alliance, but it needs clarity, firmness and strategic vision to face the world we are moving towards”.
To be fair, it seems to be more a case of a world that is moving relentlessly towards us.
The next few days may bring more in the way of clarity – but for the time being television stations are discussing the extraordinary events of the day that have tipped the geopolitical context even further onto its head.
LIVRE’s presidential candidate Jorge Pinto – a man with little chance of winning the contest – has considered what the United States effectively decided when it bombed Caracas, and said that ‘independently of what one thinks about Maduro’, what happened was “an illegal attack” because it went against international law.
“I sincerely hope that Portugal, Europe and NATO will not support this attack”, he said, echoing the question posed by António José Seguro: “Today it is Venezuela, who will it be tomorrow? What will happen if tomorrow it is Greenland that is attacked, for example? What will other countries say? I believe in defending international law anywhere on the planet. I do not believe in good or bad imperialism, in good or bad aggression.”
All these opinions were given before President Trump revealed that the American plan is to run Venezuela with a group of experienced people, and draft in the expertise of U.S. oil drilling companies – as in Mr Trump’s perspective, the oil ‘belongs to the U.S.’ “We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Trump told the press conference today. “This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country.”
“They stole our oil,” he stressed. “They took it over like it was nothing.”
Sources: ZAP/ Lusa/ nbc.news
