(TRUNEWS) Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolas Maduro, said on Tuesday night he supported Bernie Sanders in the U.S. presidential race, adding that the candidate, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, would win if the vote were “free.”
Maduro, a socialist who sees himself as the political heir to his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, has long railed against the United States, blaming it for Venezuela’s economic crisis and accusing Washington of attempting to topple him.
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, trails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for the November 8 presidential election.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders reacts to cheering supporters during a campaign rally in Sacramento, California United States May 9, 2016. REUTERS/Fred Greaves
He also criticised presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying he’s “using a force of change that’s hidden in U.S. society”.
Venezuela is reeling from a brutal economic crisis that has seen food and medicine running short and spiraling inflation destroying incomes.
The United States and Venezuela have had troubled relations since Chavez became president in 1999, and the countries have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010.
Desperate for food and household items, a man waits in line to provide for his family in socialist Venezuela
MADURO’S ENDORSEMENT RINGS HOLLOW AS VENEZUELA STRUGGLES
Residents of Venezuela‘s southern city of Puerto Ordaz enjoy pleasant views of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers and are a half hour’s drive from one of the world’s biggest hydroelectric dams.
Yet most days they suffer water and power cuts.
The irony is not lost on Marelis Gonzalez, who runs the “Las Chinas” food store. She is fed up with constant outages that halt her fridges, making drinks lukewarm and spoiling meat.
“We should be the last ones without power or water,” Gonzalez tuts at the counter on an oppressively hot morning without services in the middle-class, hilltop Villa Brasil district. “If it’s like this for us, imagine those far away!”
Across the road, 82-year-old Arcelia Leandro is waiting patiently in her kitchen for power and water to cook lunch for her grandchildren. “It’s been like this for three months, cuts every day. We’ve never had a situation like this. Horrible.”
Venezuela‘s energy and water problems have escalated in the last few weeks: yet another headache for the OPEC nation’s 30 million people already reeling from recession, the world’s highest inflation rate, and scarcities of basic goods.
Officials in President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government say they can hardly believe their bad luck. After the global oil price collapse slashed revenues by more than half, along came the drought-inducing El Niño weather phenomenon.
That has sent water levels at the all-important Guri dam and hydroelectric complex, just south-west of Puerto Ordaz, to a record low and nearing a critical 240-meter level where some turbines would be inoperable.
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