Taking the fifth: Venezuela’s talks

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Most people have an unfairly rosy view of the island of Madagascar. Lush though it is, it's a place of grinding poverty and questionable governance. Thanks to a string of back to back droughts, its south is on the cusp of famine. And Gino Strada was a war surgeon, but he didn't operate on soldiers, rather the victims of wars. From Rwanda to Yemen to Afghanistan. Our obituaries editor reflects on the life of a man who believed health care was a human right. But first, Today marks the opening of the latest round of negotiations designed to move Venezuela beyond its dictatorial rule. As the country's economy has nosedived, its politics has been in stasis since a rigged election in 2018. A crisis ensued, and by 2019, Juan Guaido, the head of the legislature, argued that without a fair winner, the constitution entitled him to be interim president Nicolas Maduro.

Nicolas.

Dozens of countries, including America, recognized him as such. But the incumbent Nicolas Maduro has gone nowhere. Last month, representatives from his regime and from Mr. Guaido's opposition signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to work together towards fair elections. The meeting starting in Mexico today isn't the first time resolution discussions have been held. It's in fact the fifth since Mr. Maduro took over from the late Hugo Chavez in 2013.

Well, all the previous events have come to nothing. And rather than cede power, Maduro has consolidated power.

Steven Gibbs is the Economist's Venezuela correspondent and is based in Caracas.

All the while, the country has continued its decline. Since 2013, Venezuela's GDP has shrunk by 75%.

So what reason to think that this time around would be any different?

There are various differences. One key change is that this time around, there is the involvement of a Very broad range of international players. Previous talks were pretty low key events. One took place mostly in Barbados, the other in the Dominican Republic. But these meetings in Mexico have a bit of an international spotlight and international backers known as the Group of Friends, that are there to provide oversight and offer suggestions and basically just help prevent the whole thing descend into a shouting match in the first few hours or days. So on the regime side, there will be a Russian representative. Russia is a key ally of Maduro and also has very important connections with the Venezuelan military. On the opposition side, there will be the government of the Netherlands represented and I'm told just a phone call away, the United States. So that's, of course, another absolutely key change for this region and for the Venezuela story is that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House.

And why does that change in administration make such a difference here?

While Trump was in power, his policy was really that the only possible negotiation with Maduro would be the terms of his departure. Trump also seriously ramped up sanctions on the Venezuelan regime. It targeted the country's oil industry, its debt market, and on an individual level, almost everyone in the regime's top brass, they're all sanctioned, including actually the lead negotiator in Mexico. Trump also was absolutely key in setting up an international coalition which recognized Juan Guaido, this opposition leader, as Venezuela's legitimate president. That was a sort of shadow government in the wings ready to step in, assuming the Maduro regime would fall. Now, of course, none of that happened. That policy failed. With a new administration in the White House, there's time for a rethink. And broadly, the Biden administration policy is to play a longer game. He is prepared to gently loosen some sanctions in return for good behavior. So if in these talks, Venezuela makes a clear sign that it's prepared to do something towards allowing free, fair elections, for example, perhaps releasing more political prisoners, then there could be some sanctions gently lifted.

And given those facts on the ground that have changed, how is the opposition feeling about this latest round of talks?

Well, I have to say that no one I have spoken to in the opposition is particularly optimistic that there will be any really significant breakthrough. And actually particularly skeptical about the whole thing are Juan Guaido, the interim president here, and his advisor, Leopoldo Lopez, an exiled politician. But they've come to the table really for two broad reasons. One is, what else do you do? If big countries like Russia, United States, groups like the European Union are saying, we're having these talks come along, then they feel they have to participate to not do so would be a sort of extinction argument. And I think the second change that's happened in the opposition is this feeling that we are playing a longer game, thinking, okay, Maduro's not going to walk out of the presidential palace in the next days or weeks, but maybe he won't run in the 2024 election. We are getting some signals of that. And if that happens, then you need to start getting your ducks in order to. To run, hopefully, a competitive election in 2024.

So what do you think is in Mr. Maduro's mind as he does come to the table here?

There are various incentives. One is possibly a bit sort of Machiavellian, and that is that he comes from a position of power. The opposition doesn't. The opposition, by its nature, doesn't talk with one voice. And I think there's been no question that the regime's quite enjoyed watching the opposition agonize about whether it really should be talking to Maduro. And that is in the regime's advantage. Also. Let's not pretend Maduro is in power, but he's in power in a country that is, to a certain extent, really ruined. There has been that massive shrink of the economy here, and he's not popular. 16% of people say they would support him. If you've only got 16% support of the people in a country, that is a vulnerability, and he would much rather be a lot more popular. He's hoping to get some respectability out of this. And also there is this thing of, will he stand for president in 2024? If he doesn't, then he is looking for an exit with some prestige. Even that he can say to his people from the leftist side of the world, you know what? I defeated Trump, I stayed in power, and then I, in a dignified way, stood down.

So given that Mr. Maduro is so unpopular that people have borne witness to rounds of negotiations like this before, what's your view on what the Venezuelan people think of this attempt?

Of all the groups looking at what's going on, probably the most cynical of all are the Venezuelan people. They've seen this happen four times before. Since Maduro came to power. Nothing has happened, and they've just seen the situation here get worse and worse. People I've spoken to have certainly said this is a sort of pointless talking shot. And actually, it is noticeable how the Venezuelan people really view politics. I've been in Venezuela for five years. When I first got here, one of the exciting things, in a way, about reporting here was just how strongly everyone felt about Politics on both sides of the argument that has completely disappeared. Politics is a dirty word now. And Venezuelans would just much rather get on with their lives in this very difficult situation they're in. That in a way is depressing. But maybe there's an upside to it that in a much less polarized situation, that may be the moment where deals can be made.

Stephen, thank you very much for joining us.

My pleasure.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show notes.

Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island, just off the coast of East Africa. Parts of it are beautiful. But I have to say that for most people in Madagascar, life is pretty miserable because it's one of the poorest places on the planet.

The Economist's Tim Judah traveled recently to Madagascar's deep south.

I went to the regional capital of Andri Province, Ambovombe, and the real problem is the lack of water. The south of the country is being hit by a drought. And just so happened that right outside the in my bedroom in the hotel I was staying in Ambovonbay, they had a large cistern. The morning that I was there, they were pumping water into it. And then people were taking water out. Nobody has running water.

UN agencies have appealed for $155 million in aid for the country. The World Food Program says a changing climate has brought devastation to Madagascar's south. This so called kerey, a drought that brings hunger is an annual occurrence, but in some places lately it's lasted for years instead of months. Now crop failures and the coronavirus have conspired to bring Madagascar's people to the brink of famine.

The most shocking thing was when I went to a small village called called Ehavo. I met the deputy director of the school and he told me that in 2018 it had 250 pupils, but last year there were only 110. You know, a lot of the pupils live quite far away, so they have to walk several kilometers to get to school. And hungry children, you know, are in no position to walk for exhausting kilometers and kilometers. And he says quite apart from that, they've got to go out and hunt for food and work to earn, you know, a few pennies. And what happens if you don't have proper, nutritious and a varied diet is that you get stunting. That means that children don't grow to their full proper extent. And another factor is that UNICEF, the UN's children's organization. It's been fighting against child marriage for a long time. But what they've discovered is that in times of stress like this, in times of drought, that families with girls and young girls often actually sell their daughters. And of course, all the problems of the south, and of course, Madagascar as a whole, have been compounded by the pandemic.

How so? How has the pandemic made matters worse?

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it was growing. In 2020, the World bank had expected its GDP to grow by 5.2%, but instead it shrank by 4.2%. The government reacted to the pandemic by effectively sealing off the island. And of course, their biggest foreign exchange earner was tourism, and that's basically ground to a halt. And to make matters worse, Madagascar was very late in dealing with COVID apart from sealing the country off, because the president has been touting a herbal treatment called Covid Organics. It's some sort of local herbal concoction.

Pour le tretement depation du Covid.

There's no particular evidence that it works, but Covid organics had to be bought by the government from the private producers. It meant that he and the country did not sign up to Covax, the global program for distributing free vaccines to poorer countries. It then signed up late. Vaccines are starting to arrive, but so far, less than 1% of the population has even had vaccine. One dose.

But what about international aid, though? When there is this kind of grinding poverty, there's usually some sort of relief.

There is some aid getting to the affected area, but actually it's not that there's a physical problem of getting aid to the country. I mean, there is food in Madagascar. One of the problems is there are no roads in the south. It's very difficult to get stuff about. When I went to a little village of Maroalapoty, I saw kids being given what's called a plumpy nut. And basically, plumpy nut is just a very small packet of souped up peanut butter. But, you know, the real problem in the south of Madagascar is that nothing has been done in this region for 60 years since independence. What the agencies are complaining about. I had an interesting interview with Michel Sal, who is the director for UNICEF in the country. And he said the real problem has been decades of bad governance. And he basically said, if all of the money that we've spent dealing with these emergencies over the years and over the decades now have been plowed into proper development, things would have been Very, very different.

And in what way is bad governance getting in the way of that?

I went to see Suja Lahimara. He is the governor of Andrei Province, which is one of the epicenters of this sort of drought region.

This region, the Andrii region, has been always known as the capital of drought.

I said to Mr. Lahimaro, it's been 60 years of independence. This place just feels like it's completely forgotten. Why is that?

If we ask ourselves, we wonder, did they have the means to resolve, to tackle the issues or the problems of Andrii? Of course they did, but it's all about a political will.

He said. We used to think this area was kept poor on purpose and that they were then shown off to agencies and foreigners, and it was a way of getting money, aid, money for the whole of the country. I don't know if that's true, but that's what the governor said that he thought and many people in the region thought. And it's not like no money's been spent there over the last 60 years. The area even has a nickname, the graveyard of the project, meaning that money has been put in in the past, but it's just been stolen and has never got to people.

So based on what you've heard and seen, what do you think it would take to get Madagascar on a firmer footing?

It really needs just proper development. I mean, Madagascar is a big country. You know, it's got resources, but the fact is that it's had a population explosion over the last 60 years. There were 5 million people before. Now there are 27 million people. The country needs basic stuff like electricity to develop. Only 15% of people have electricity, and those that do have it complain that it's extremely expensive. Last week, the president was in Paris. He went to talk to foreign investors, but it's kind of a big sell because it's so underdeveloped, and investors also have got to worry about Madagascar's stability. This is a country which came close to civil war a couple of decades ago. The armies intervened regularly in politics. Mr. Angelina came to power first in 2009 as a result of a coup, and there's worries about the stability of. Of the country. But unless there is development which can mitigate problems, then we're going to see these problems go on, and people will suffer.

Thanks very much for joining us, Tim.

Thanks very much for having me.

People often wondered why Gino Strada had chosen such a strange and dangerous life.

Ann Rowe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

He was a heart and lung surgeon. And he could have had a very wealthy, leisurely life in Italy if he had wanted one. But instead, he spent his medical career out in some of the most desperate parts of the world, doing operations in makeshift tents and broken down places. And you might often see him, between patients, dashing outside to have a cigarette. He looked as if he had to keep chain smoking just to keep going in these awful conditions, because the wounds he was dealing with were those caused by bomb blasts and landmines which had torn bodies apart. The worst thing, as far as he was concerned, was that the people he was operating on were not combatants, they were not soldiers. Instead, they were women who'd been going to get water, or farmers who'd been crossing their fields. They were almost all of them, 90%, he reckoned, civilians. About half of those were children. And the reason there were so many children was that the anti personnel mines that were being dropped, especially in places like Afghanistan, had been cynically designed to appeal to children, especially a sort called Green Parrot, which were like little winged green birds that any child would want to pick up. And as soon as they did, the device would explode in their hands. He decided he would form his own charity. He'd been working for the Red Cross, but the Red Cross was gradually withdrawing from the most difficult places. So in 1994, around his kitchen table in Milan, he and his wife, Teresa sati, and about 20 friends set up a charity called Emergency. And they decided that they would set up a network of the most marvelous hospitals that they could afford to build. He set up a pediatric center in the Central African Republic, he set up another one in Uganda, and then he built a cardiac hospital in Sudan. He made petitions, particularly sure that it would be a splendid building. And he was intent that it should be not only the highest tech and staffed with the best possible doctors and nurses, but also that it should be, in his words, scandalously beautiful. So he was continuing this theme of offering the poor facilities just as good as those enjoyed by the rich. The heart of his work, however, lay in Afghanistan. And he had to negotiate with a Tajik commander in the Pangshir Valley in order to get a site to build his hospital. And it became the very best maternity facility in the whole of Afghanistan. Then he decided he would build a center for surgical trauma in Kabul. And there again he had to negotiate, this time with the then leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar. And they were difficult to talks. But in the end, he was allowed to open up a hospital in a building that had been a kindergarten. And this became a renowned trauma center again, the best one in the city and the first one in the city. But still the best other places were not so receptive to his ideas. He tried to set up hospitals in Somalia and in Palestine, also in Chechnya. There was nothing doing in any of them. In Libya, he tried to set up hospitals and was gradually told that it was only criminals who were using them because they would shoot each other up and then try to free ride on his facilities, because all his hospitals were free for the poor. He realized then that the real problem, the fundamental problem that he couldn't solve was war itself. And he became convinced that war had to be abolished somehow. Of course, this was thought a crazy idea by all the people who otherwise supported him. But he absolutely insisted that it ought to be possible to abolish war, that people should be able to talk to each other. And he could foresee a time when making war would be as unthinkable as slavery. His charity Emergency campaigned very hard in Italy and was eventually successful in stopping the production of of antipersonnel landmines in the country. Italy was at one stage the third largest producer of such devices. Meanwhile, he carried on working. He worked all hours in operating theaters in war zones, wearing himself out. He felt very strongly that he was only a drop in the ocean, that he was only able to do a smaller, infinite, infinitesimal amount of what needed to be done for the poor in these awful places. But all the same, he insisted on continuing doing everything he could to establish the best sort of care for the poor and to end war. At least he could establish not only his centers of excellence, but also beauty. He was extremely insistent that all his hospitals should be surrounded by orchards and groves and gardens. And in his hospital in Kabul, he had planted 200 different varieties of roses. And his dream remained that one day his wards would simply be filled with roses and there would no longer be any war wounded anywhere.

Ann Ro Angino Strada, who's died aged 73. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors this week are Kim Gitelson and Chris Impey and our sound engineer, Saul Rivers, with help from William Rowe. Our senior producers are Duncan Barber and Sam Colbert. Our producers are Stevie Hertz and William Warren and assistant producers Jason Hoskin and Abasoye Ocean Dairo, with extra production help this week from John Jo Devlin and Lucy Taylor. We'll all see you back here on Monday.