National leaders reduced to pawns, ridicule

Jan 23, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The US is stripping national leaders of their dignity, humiliating national sovereignties, and undermining national self-determination. In Greenland, a leader is reduced to tears before the world.

In Cuba, another leader bartering (negotiating is what it is broadcast as) to keep going on a string and a hope. In Venezuela, an opposition battler was groomed to be Nicolas Maduro’s heir, only to be abandoned and embarrassed in front of a global audience. And, in Guyana, there is government with all the power and control that can be had, only for its leaders to be rendered impotent and useful only as willing stooges.

A range of shabby excuses, if they can be called that, have been advanced for coveting other people’s land, grabbing other people’s riches, and rechanneling the potential of independent nations. The US is neither playing games about its naked ambitions, nor pretending at subtlety, relative to what it wants, and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to force the leaders of sovereign countries to acquiesce to its demands. And openly acquiesce they have, for the most part, with the leaders of Venezuela and Guyana standing as outstanding examples of weakness and failure. Others are trying to put up a fight and holdout, such as Canada and Greenland, with the former a tough nut to crack, and the latter’s position seemingly precarious (even with troops on the move). The continuity of the whole NATO alliance is now under the most daunting threat in its existence. The irony is that the threat is not from a hostile external power, but a founder and one that is supposed to be the staunchest of friends. Indeed, might is right is now the prevailing doctrine, which fewer and fewer are willing to challenge.

In Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado has made herself into a figure of pathos, as she grovels to get on the right side of US President Donald Trump. The once rising Venezuelan political star has since plummeted to low depths, with first donating her well-earned Nobel Peace Prize to the US president, in what has to qualify as a moment of pure political farce.

She was the damsel in distress, the tireless fighter for democracy against some overwhelming odds, but still lost her princess status, when the US decided that she didn’t have what it takes to be its puppet in Venezuela. Instead of using that insulting development as the incentive to take a stand and rally her shell-shocked compadres, she caved, is towing the US line, and still hoping for the handout of the Venezuelan leadership crown to be placed on her head. The will of her people has become the baggage that is too much to carry, best left undiscussed.

But Machado still has some bounce left in her -she is now prattling about ‘orderly transition’, the return of free elections and democracy in Venezuela. It is nauseating some of the things that politicians do to earn the favor of a steamrolling US president, and to keep themselves in consideration. If they have to sell their principles, it is a small price to be paid. When they sellout the aspirations of their people, that is seen as the collateral damage that all but guarantees their own political success.

In Guyana, most national political figures have already sold their souls, and they don’t care about how they look before the people who elected them to this nation’s most influential offices. They have no backbone, do not have the courage to stand up, and settle for groveling and prostrating themselves before the US to stay in power, or to get closer to it. Few are the leading politicians who speak out of turn about prioritising Guyana’s interests above those of others. Often, they don’t speak at all on the independence of Guyana, and if they do, it is immediately apparent that it is hot air that evaporates before any cold scrutiny.

Guyanese leaders have manifested a ready tendency to rollover, surrender a country and its wealth, without a defiant stance taken, and a strong word uttered. Again, might is right, and against that Guyanese leaders refuse to put up a fight. They take the cowardly route: talking in bubbles, surrendering.

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Editorial, Greenland, National leaders, pawns, ridicule

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