Former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said in a radio interview in Talkradio that the Venezuelan crisis was provoked by the United States, able to manipulate with its propaganda what happens in other countries.
He considered that Britain should not endorse the sanctions to the crisis of Venezuela, and criticized the “very dark record” of the United States in Latin American events.
“Venezuela “is not a dictatorship” and we will not know “for decades” if the election was hit by a fraud, but one sponsored by the United States”, he added in the debate facilitated by TalkRadio, on which he faced right-wing host Julia Hartley- Brewer, on the crisis of the South American country and the statements by the Smartmatic company (maker of the Electronic voting machines used in Venezuela), that put in doubt the elections for the National Constituent Assembly in Venezuela.
“Give me evidences”, demanded Livingstone to Hartley-Brewer: “You have only given me the propaganda that circulates around the world.”
When asked if the elections were a proof of this, Mr. Livingstone said: “It is quite clear that their Government system is not working. There you have a blockade between the Parliament and the President, the two have been elected, he has created a Constitution to solve that crisis … I mean, I would like to see something like this here in Britain”.
“It is time for us to look at our own Constitution, because we are the most centralized of all Western countries”, he added.
Livingstone said former President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, brought people out of poverty and created a fair system. “Now there are real problems, and Maduro has to face them,” he said.
“But one of the things Chavez did when he came to power was not to eliminate all the oligarchs. There were about 200 families who controlled about 80% of Venezuela’s wealth, and he allowed them to keep going on”.
“And I suspect that many of them are using their power, their control over imports and exports, medicines and food, to make things difficult and thus undermine Maduro.”
Faced with a new sting of the host, Livingstone clarified: “I did not advise him to kill the oligarchs, I advised him to invest in infrastructure, I am not in favor of killing anyone”.
But he reiterated his claim that other forces, such as the United States, could be behind the current riots. “Nothing antidemocratic is justifiable, but I want to wait and see the truth,” he said.
“In 30 years, when I am 102, you bring me to this program again and we will examine the declassified documents of the US Government on the role of the CIA (in this plot). And I suspect that we will discover that much of this crisis has been designed from abroad, just as it happened in Brazil in ’64, in Argentina and Chile”.
Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008 by the Labor Party, and is one of the most popular politicians in Britain. He is known as “Red Ken”.
On George W. Bush’s visit to London in 2005, he said: “The most dangerous man in the world is coming,” and denounced the high cost of this visit for the Londoners – 18 million euros -. During his tenure, London was elected as the organizer of the 2012 Olympic Games, thanks to a brilliant campaign in which it was competing with Paris and Madrid, among others.
