Canada Honours Venezuelan Imposter
- Margaret Villamizar -
Ottawa picket against Guaidó's visit, January 27, 2020.
On January 26, it was made public, with one day's
notice, that the imposter who calls himself the "interim president" of
Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, was being brought to Canada to meet
with Prime Minister Trudeau and Foreign Minister
François-Philippe Champagne.
The European tour that preceded his trip to Canada did little to
achieve its purpose of shoring up his battered image at home. While
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed him in presidential style
at his official residence, Guaidó's encounter with President
Emmanuel Macron of France, the only other head of state who received
him -- but as "deputy Guaidó" -- was more private and low
key. Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez refused to receive him and
sent his newly appointed Foreign Minister to meet him away from
government premises. Some others, such as German Chancellor Angela
Merkel and prime ministers from the Netherlands, Austria and Greece,
are said to have spoken briefly with him on the sidelines of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where his biggest disappointment
was the failure to at least get a photo op with Donald Trump, who had
already left before Guaidó arrived. The Trudeau government
did its best to save the situation in Davos by hosting a meeting for
Guaidó of ambassadors to the European Parliament of Lima
Group countries.
Guaidó meets with ambassadors of Lima
Group countries in Ottawa at the Colombian embassy, January 27, 2020.
But in Ottawa, his last official stop -- in what
his handlers now call a "world tour" -- before heading to the U.S. and
another attempt to appear beside his big boss Trump, the Trudeau
government received Guaidó in the manner he wanted. This
imposter is more and more despised at home as a corrupt and
untrustworthy individual by those who a year ago supported his phony
"presidency," to the extent that one of his rivals was elected to
replace him as president of the National Assembly. Yet in Canada he was
received by the Prime Minister in his Parliament Hill office and
paraded around as "President Guaidó," with Minister
Champagne often dropping the "interim" part of this bogus title.
Trudeau said he praised the U.S. puppet and coupmonger in their meeting
for "the leadership he's shown in his efforts to return democracy to
Venezuela" and offered him "our continued support."
 After his meeting
with Trudeau and press conference with Champagne, and of course the
required photo ops, Guaidó was whisked off to the
Parliamentary Gallery where he was introduced to a House full of MPs,
given it was the opening day of the current sitting. They dutifully
gave "his excellency the interim president of the Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela" -- as he was addressed by the Speaker -- loud applause
and a standing ovation.
While it is not known if there were any MPs
present in the House who declined to participate in this dishonourable
activity, there certainly were no statements by any party leaders or
spokespersons expressing opposition to Guaidó -- a seditious
coup plotter -- being received by the Prime Minister of Canada and in
Parliament as a champion of democracy. That role fell to the
Canadian people who protested his visit in their own name with a
militant demonstration on Parliament Hill, and to one Member of
Parliament, the NDP representative for Churchill--Keewatinook Aski in
Manitoba, Niki Ashton, who spoke for herself, tweeting: "Shameful to
see @JustinTrudeau prop up an unelected figure and seek to legitimize a
deeply divisive and undemocratic agenda. This visit is the opposite of
supporting peace and democracy."
Other MPs and parties have much to answer for, and need to be held to
account by Canadians for their complicity in the Trudeau government's
appeasement of the U.S. and subservience to its criminal agenda against
the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its people.
Guaidó's closing act in Ottawa was to
speak to "the Venezuelan diaspora" at a rally of sorts hosted for him
at allsaints Event Space by the Ottawa Branch of the Canadian
International Council (CIC). Canadian government officials were also in
attendance and introduced at the event. The CIC president, Ben
Rowswell, Canada's former ambassador to Venezuela, was the
MC. Rowswell's main function during his term in office from
2014 to 2017 was to use Canada's embassy in Caracas as a headquarters
for subversion through an aggressive U.S.-style "democracy promotion"
campaign to support the cause of foreign-backed opposition groups in
the country.
Not everything went smoothly for the imposter, however, in his
triumphal Ottawa visit. No sooner had word got out about
Guaidó's response to Minister Champagne saying Canada would
intercede (again) with Cuba to have it "become part of the solution as
opposed to the problem in Venezuela" than the U.S. Undersecretary of
State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Michael Kozak pounced.
Guaidó told reporters, "With respect to Cuba, we are going
to move forward, we want them to be part of the solution." Kozak let it
be known he had gone off script and made it clear that "Cuba is not the
solution to the problems of the Venezuelan people; it's the problem."
This forced Guaidó's "ambassador" to Canada and his press
office to go into damage control mode. The false Venezuelan ambassador
declared that Guaidó at no time spoke about negotiating with
Cuba and that "on the contrary he denounced the illegitimate, abusive
and shameful interference of the Cuban dictatorship, such that getting
out of the crisis means ending its occupation [of Venezuela]." A
statement was hastily issued by Guaidó's "government"
listing all the hostile actions it was taking, such as prohibiting the
shipment of Venezuelan oil to Cuba and calling on other countries to
help enforce it, as well as asking "presidents of Latin America and the
U.S." to issue sanctions against Cuba. It said the only possible role
for Cuba in Venezuela was to have its functionaries leave the country.
For good measure, the statement pledged Guaidó's support for
the U.S. regime-change agenda in Nicaragua and Cuba, in anticipation of
his one publicly announced event in the United States -- an address in
Miami on February 1 to a gathering of counterrevolutionaries clamouring
for the U.S. to deliver "freedom" to those countries as well as to
Venezuela.
Guaidó's pathetic flip-flop on the question of Cuba to
ingratiate himself with both the Trudeau government while in Ottawa and
his real masters in Washington was not lost on Venezuelans, especially
those aligned with opposition factions that have lost all faith in him.
Many of them mocked Guaidó for thinking he could "please
both god and the devil" without suffering the consequences. So ended
another leg of his emperor-with-no-clothes "world tour," on which he
was met wherever he went by groups of people denouncing his presence,
the illegitimate mission he was on, and any support given to him by the
governments of their countries.
In this regard, the Canadians who demonstrated on
Parliament Hill on January 27 spoke for many more across the country
when they declared Guaidó not welcome in Canada and demanded
that Venezuela's sovereignty be respected. Now it is up to those who
organized and took part in the whole shameful public relations exercise
in Ottawa, and those parties in Parliament and MPs that did not raise a
peep against it, to account for their dishonourable behaviour. It
obviously is what emboldened the false "Venezuelan ambassador to
Canada" to declare untruthfully that Juan Guaidó enjoyed not
only the support of the Canadian government and all of Parliament, but
of the Canadian people!
Ottawa picket against Guaidó's visit,
January 27, 2020.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 2 - February 1, 2020
Article Link:
: Trudeau Government Brings Shame on Itself - Margaret Villamizar
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
