KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro de­clar­ing vic­to­ry in the coun­try’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tions last Sun­day, de­spite the op­po­si­tion par­ty and oth­ers claim­ing they have con­trast­ing ev­i­dence, T&T should pre­pare for an­oth­er “great ex­o­dus” from Venezuela.

Hu­man rights ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that there are al­ready for­eign news­pa­per re­ports stat­ing that 18 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion could leave Venezuela if Maduro does not demit of­fice.

Figueroa-Leon said this would be hard on neigh­bour­ing coun­tries like Colom­bia, which the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion for Refugees states has near­ly three mil­lion Venezue­lan refugees and mi­grants.

“These peo­ple have to find jobs and where to live, so imag­ine an ex­o­dus of over 100,000 Venezue­lans com­ing to Trinidad. Right now, Trinidad is not too fine eco­nom­i­cal­ly. What is go­ing to hap­pen? And I am say­ing that our Gov­ern­ment is not putting any­thing in place,” Figueroa-Leon said.

She said not every Venezue­lan who sets foot in T&T is good, pro­fes­sion­al or ed­u­cat­ed. With many of them head­ed here, she said the Gov­ern­ment should set up a com­put­erised cen­tre with help from In­ter­pol or the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to ac­cess their crim­i­nal data­bas­es. That way, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies here can screen mi­grants to im­prison the crim­i­nals and repa­tri­ate them. She said the Gov­ern­ment should al­so give those who can con­tribute to the coun­try a chance.

“I live in a world where every hu­man is your broth­er.”

Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil is­sued a pre­lim­i­nary re­port on Ju­ly 29 stat­ing that Maduro had won the elec­tion with 51 per cent of the votes over op­po­si­tion can­di­date Ed­mun­do Gon­za­lez. On Fri­day, the coun­cil said it tal­lied near­ly 97 per cent of votes, which showed Maduro’s vic­to­ry with just un­der 52 per cent. The Op­po­si­tion, how­ev­er, claims to have ev­i­dence its can­di­date won the ma­jor votes.

Figueroa-Leon said Venezuela’s con­sti­tu­tion states that the coun­cil has 48 hours to present the tal­ly of all the states, coun­ties, dis­tricts, parish­es and var­i­ous em­bassies.

“To­day is sev­en days since the Venezue­lan elec­tions. They have not re­leased the fi­nal tal­ly. What does that tell you?”

Figueroa-Leon said she has a signed doc­u­ment of the tal­ly in Trinidad, as oth­ers have in Venezuela, that shows Gon­za­lez won the elec­tion. She said that with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca show­ing an in­ter­est in the out­come, Maduro would not be able to demit of­fice eas­i­ly un­less he ne­go­ti­ates refuge sta­tus in an­oth­er coun­try.

As for why Venezue­lans would want to leave their coun­try, she said peo­ple start­ed to see how Maduro sup­port­ers be­gan liv­ing lav­ish­ly with man­sions and he­li­pads. On­ly they can af­ford cars and hous­es to live com­fort­ably, she added.

Not­ing that the Venezue­lan min­i­mum wage was ac­tu­al­ly US$5 per hour, and cit­i­zens re­ceived US$20 as an eco­nom­ic war bonus, she said peo­ple can­not think or speak against the gov­ern­ment, as agents force peo­ple to hand over their mo­bile phones for in­spec­tion. She said Guardia Na­cional force­ful­ly in­spect­ed her cousin’s phone and im­pris­oned her for the past five days with­out lay­ing a charge or is­su­ing a fine.

“If they see any post that your friend sends you that or any­thing against the gov­ern­ment, you are go­ing to prison.”

She said pri­ma­ry schools in­doc­tri­nate stu­dents, por­tray­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez as a sav­iour. Mean­while, many ed­u­ca­tors have left the sys­tem.

“Those now look­ing to leave were wait­ing for the elec­tion and saw no need to leave be­cause every­one said the op­po­si­tion would win.”

Figueroa-Leon said while Venezue­lan chil­dren may not get an ed­u­ca­tion, the women will get no re­spect and the men ex­ploit­ed here in Trinidad, they will still earn sig­nif­i­cant­ly more mon­ey clean­ing some­one’s home.