Versión Español
EspañolA high-standing member of Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela admitted in an interview with Al Jazeera that Hugo Chávez failed to properly diversify the country’s economy in times of booming oil deals. It was one of many weak responses given about the dictatorship during the tough interview.
Delcy Rodríguez, President of the illegitimate Constituent National Assembly, was corned by several questions during the interview, forcing her to admit to or dodge many of the government’s administrative failures.
“In hindsight we could not and did not know how to diversify the economy in times of oil boom,” she said. “We tried, but it is a model that is so culturally rooted in the Venezuelan people, that we were not able to overcome that old model, and we entered into crisis. That made us vulnerable.”
Journalist Lucia Newman conducted the interview, asking Rodríguez various questions about the country’s economy, but also what happened to the US $1.5 trillion Venezuela had garnered over years of lucrative oil deals.
Rodríguez did not know how to answer the question and began to talk about what she called an “economic war” on oil economies in Russia and Venezuela. Newman, not convinced by the answer, asked again: Where is the money?
According to Rodríguez, who still did not give a precise answer, the oil money had been redistributed in a way that benefitted the Venezuelan people.
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Rodríguez also struggled to answer questions about the country’s humanitarian crisis, claiming that the problem was caused by “economic aggression” imposed by the United States rather than by the mistakes and inactivity of the government.
“We can not give in just because there is a financial embargo against Venezuela,” she concluded in the interview.
Source: Sumarium.
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