A comparison between Venezuela and Egypt: nothing changes when there is no rule of law

Nov 23, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

What Venezuela is doing according to the declarations made by its Vice President before the International Court of Justice last week, scares the hell out of me, and in fact should scare the citizens of every country on this planet.

What this woman is saying is that every boundary between any two countries established by international agreement or international courts or arbitrations, are invalid, if enough people in any country by referendum, rejects these agreements as to boundaries, even though such agreements or arbitrations were made and agreed hundreds of years before.  To work up a people’s expectations as we see the Maduro government doing, is below contempt. No wonder Venezuela with 300 billion barrels of oil is now the poorest country in this entire planet which has not been decimated by war, caused by idiotic and corrupt governance of its national resources. And it’s a good lesson for Guyana. On 2002-11-26, I aired a commentary in Guyana in which I said this quote, “Whilst researching my commentary on hydroelectric dams and their effects on the economies of countries, I specifically studied the effects of the Aswan high dam in Egypt and the Venezuelan 16 Hydro dams, but in order to do that I had to research the economies of both of these countries.

Egypt is 387,000 square miles and Venezuela is 352,000 square miles, almost the exactly the same but Egypt has 70 million people and Venezuela only has 24 million people. The arable lands of Egypt are an incredibly low 3 percent because 97 % is desert. Venezuela amazingly has exactly the same 3% arable land with 96% jungle. 1% has permanent crops. Incidentally, what the hell do they need our Essequibo land for if they can only develop 3% of theirs. So, these two countries have exactly the same land area available to grow food crops and almost exactly the same total land mass. Actually, Venezuela has much more water than Egypt, 11,600 square miles within their land mass is water, rivers, lakes etc. compared to 2,317 square miles in Egypt.

The GDP per capita of Venezuela was 6100 US per annum; in other words, in Venezuela, the average income per person was 6,100 US dollars per year but Egypt was only 3700 US per person per year. The Venezuelan Exports in 2001 was 29.5 billion US, whilst Egypt was only 7.1 billion. Egypt however has a huge tourist trade. The national budgets for these two countries are exactly the same with revenues of around 21 billion US and expenditures of around 27 billion US the unemployment rate of the two countries were 12 and 14 % also the same.

So these two countries have exactly the same land mass, exactly the same development of it, exactly the same budgets, but Egypt has 70 million people and Venezuela has 24 million people. This means that the 24 million people are living in a country which has a national budget that is to all intents and purposes identical to Egypt but only have around one third of the population of Egypt. But the Venezuelans export far more, three times more than Egypt.

Now here is what caught my attention, 67% of the Venezuelan people live below the poverty line whilst only 22% in Egypt do. Given all that I have told you so far and if you have followed my amateurish presentation of the facts, I am after all no economist, how can this possibly be?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have studied the governmental systems of both countries and they both have similar governments very much like Guyana, a presidential system which to all intents and purposes controls everything, and so I could not account for this incredible phenomenon of why a rich country like Venezuela has so many of its people living in abject poverty. Unlike Guyana however Venezuela has a federal system of Government, Egypt has what is called a system of 26 governates which in effect is nearly the same thing. So, all those people who think that federalism in Guyana can change anything, stay tuned.

I am a Catholic; I have always been one and I do not intend to change but Egypt is 98% Sunni Muslim and Venezuela is 98% catholic. Are the Islamic leaders demanding that the pie be shared equitably in Egypt? Whilst the corruption in the Venezuelan system of governance would make our boys here look like Mother Mary? After reflecting on the problem for some time and studying the social issues of the two countries, I have come to the conclusion that the stabilizing force in Egypt IS the Muslim faith and the power of the Muslim religious leaders who demand equitable governance and get it. Venezuela has no such check and balance, so the rich are very, very rich and the poor are very, very poor.

So, the point of this comment is this, corruption destroys countries just as effectively as WARS.  This is probably true of almost all Latin American states and that is why most of them are turning to the left, first Venezuela, then Brazil and now Ecuador.

The problem is that even when they do, nothing changes because their system of governance does not change, the Chavezes of this world will not change their system of government, to allow the rule of law to stand supreme and allow the parliament and therefore the people of the nation to have some say in what goes on.  The media are to all intents and purposes muzzled and are not allowed access to governmental data so that they can point out the enormous inequity that exists within these countries.  So they, like us, have democratic elections to decide who the dictators and their henchmen will be for the next five years and all they do is fill their own pockets during that period. But the common man always ends up with the dirty end of the stick. No matter what promises were made by these leftist leaders who promise to change the huge disparity between the rich and the poor, nothing changes.”

Editor, I have not changed one word of what I said in 2002.

Yours truly,

Tony Vieira

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• boundary, country, International Court of Justice, Tony Vieira, Vice President

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