Venezuela: Political Situation Debate
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John Grogan
Main Page: John Grogan (Labour - Keighley)Department Debates - View all John Grogan's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Graham Jones
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a failed authoritarian communist state, but are not all communist states authoritarian in their outlook? It is certainly a basket case.
I do not need to elaborate on the stories from Venezuela that we have all witnessed over the summer and before. Recent political events have been condemned by all—the UN, the EU, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the South American trading bloc Mercosur and Venezuela’s neighbouring countries. Importantly for Opposition Members, and coming to my right hon. Friend’s point, Socialist International has also condemned the Chavista regime, and we stand alongside our sister socialist parties in opposition to the Venezuelan regime.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that in politics there is sometimes a clear right and wrong? When any President in effect abolishes a Parliament that opposes him and replaces it with a lapdog Assembly, there is only one side—whatever President Trump or anybody else does—for democrats and those in this House who believe in human rights to be on regarding that issue: condemning that action of abolishing the Parliament.
Graham Jones
I, and Members of this House, do condemn the actions of the Maduro Government. My hon. Friend alludes to the point that we must not conflate power and the powerless. These are the decisions of those in power, not of those who are powerless—the protestors—and it is the regime that we should condemn, not the people of Venezuela.