MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuela: Maduro says Milei a “fatal mistake”

Milei thinks that “by shrinking the State prosperity will be born by spontaneous generation,” Maduro explained

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Monday said his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei was a “fatal error” because of his State-capping economic policies. “You are a mistake in the history of Latin America, Milei, a fatal mistake in the history of Argentina,” Maduro said during his annual message before the National Assembly in Caracas.

In Maduro's view, Milei wrongly believes that “by shrinking the State prosperity will be born by spontaneous generation.” The libertarian leader's measures seek “to destroy the rule of law, to destroy the State, to destroy all social and labor rights, to destroy the national economy, and to colonize Argentina and deliver it on its knees to US imperialism,” Maduro also argued.

Regarding his achievements at the helm of Venezuela, Maduro insisted that his government was “to consolidate an inclusive diversification model,” to promote a new productive export model. He also spoke about “the full independence of the country in all areas of its development” and pledged that “the great priority of the years to come has to be the educational, scientific, technological and cultural development of” the country and “the transformation and definitive consolidation of Venezuela's internal security model of peace and territorial integrity.”

The Chavista ruler also mentioned “a powerful process of repoliticization of the majorities” to consolidate democracy. “Politics of inclusion, of participation, it is about politics seen as a public service,” Maduro underlined before focusing on ecological adjustments “to assume the preservation of the planet, to assume the preparation of our country to fight the climate crisis.”

He also envisioned Venezuela playing a key role in geopolitical mattters “to rebuild Latin American and Caribbean integration by strengthening CELAC, recovering Unasur, developing ALBA.”

Maduro also pointed out that his country was one of the 19 “whose economic, commercial and human rights have been illegally violated by the United States of America every day, systematically, for the last nine years.”

“For that reason, each one of the results obtained, each goal accomplished, must bear the label 'made, built, designed, created, overcome, in times of war and imperialist blockade,” he stressed. “Our objective is the total lifting of all sanctions” since Venezuela is not a colony that “is satisfied with permits.”

Due to the US sanctions, “Venezuela stopped producing 3,993 million barrels of oil and stopped receiving US$ 323 billion,” Maduro noted while blaming these factors for the economic decline. Maduro said that was the US did was tantamount to a genocide or an economic massacre.