IT’S OF much significance that the nearly two-month-long political unrest in Venezuela – where the government of President Nicolas Maduro has accused the Washington administration of President Barack Obama of ignoring its pleas for dialogue – attracted more coverage in the Barbados media than any other issues publicly discussed during the four-day mid-year meeting of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) that concluded here on Monday.
This was evident from coverage focused on rival panels supportive or opposed to the government in Caracas, as well as the understandable focus on the address by and related comments of Prime Minister Freundel Stuart on Sunday at Hilton Barbados.
The IAPA, with a known institutionalised bias against left wing or socialist-oriented governments and media in Latin America and the Caribbean, would have caused no surprises by its descriptive rationale for a “Press freedom” panel on destabilising political developments in Venezuela.
Having gone on record under its then president as supportive of the 1992 military coup against the freely elected government of the now late President Hugo Chavez, IAPA’s “Press freedom” panel had settled for outlining an agenda on Venezuela In Crisis: Journalists Speak.
“Violence and intolerance,” said an explanatory note for the panel, “have seriously deteriorated freedom of expression and of the Press in the country.”
Further, the “information blackout, acts of censorship, attacks on journalists and media workers, restrictions on access to public information, discrimination in the distribution of official advertising, media concentration and the imposition of obstacles to access foreign currency is the corollary of the official strategy aimed at punishing any vestige of opposition and the independent media . . .”.
Well, it so happened that a Friends Of Venezuela Solidarity Committee was quite ready with counter salvos at the nearby Radisson Acquatic Resort with a panel expediently styled The Role Of The Mass Media In The Campaign Of Psychological Warfare That Is Currently Being Waged Against The Government Of Venezuela.
It could not have come as a surprise to those familiar with the expertise, ideological commitment and passionate support for the embattled government in Caracas that the members of that panel (as identified in the April 6 Sunday Sun report), were in no mood to play footsy with IAPA’s caricature of media freedom and the Maduro administration via its own panel presentation.
What I found perplexing was an earlier contention by the respected political/cultural activist and social commentator David Comissiong of the Clement Payne Centre that a perceived “anti-Venezuelan sentiment” displayed by the Barbados Government may have influenced IAPA’s decision to hold its mid-year meeting here.
Unless I missed it, while being away from Barbados for almost a fortnight last month, I cannot recall any official statement, or public posturings by the administration of Prime Minister Stuart to give credence to such an ascribed “fault” by the Government.
However, on Sunday, when he delivered his invited address to the assembled IAPA participants and fielded questions, Mr Stuart did not miss the opportunity to state his Government’s preparedness to play an independent and constructive role to help that country “to settle down so that the elected [note ‘elected’] government of Venezuela can get on with its work . . .”.
He went on to disclose that during this week, he is scheduled to meet with Venezuela’s accredited ambassador to Barbados (Jose Gomez Febresto) to “discuss matters of mutual interest”.
Cynics may be inclined to treat this response by the Prime Minister as a typical diplomatic gesture.
The Prime Minister’s careful offer to help the “elected government” of Venezuela to “get on with its work” is outstandingly different from the cynical refusal, to date, by President Obama’s contemptuous public silence to President Maduro’s oral and written calls for dialogue with Washington to address the very costly consequences – in lives, destroyed properties and the national economy as a whole – of the ongoing political confrontations.
No one in CARICOM familiar with the history of IAPA in a different dispensation in this region when anti-communism political hysteria did much harm to governments, organisations and institutions should seriously expect that hemispheric media body to desist from its political stance against the Maduro-led administration.
But it is certainly more than time for the government of what prides itself as the world’s “greatest democracy” – United States of America – to end its non-response to Mr Maduro’s appeals for dialogue to make it possible for Washington and Caracas to, for a start, resume diplomatic relations.
After all, the Bolivarian socialist-oriented party in power has repeatedly won democratic presidential, national and local government elections. To their credit, the Caribbean Community, Organisation of American States as well as the Union of South American Nations have separately expressed their desire for dialogue to bring an end to costly confrontational politics in the best interest of Venezuela.
Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.