The efforts of Hugo Chàvez’s hand-picked successor to hold onto power in the face of democratic unrest, through increasingly violent methods, has gotten a resounding endorsement from a predictable source. Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reports:
President Bashar al-Assad expressed Syria’s support to the approach of the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro in running Venezuela ”that he draws from the world heritage principles and the historical legacy of Latin America’s great leaders.”
In a letter he sent to the Venezuelan President on Wednesday, President al-Assad expressed the Syrian people’s solidarity with President Maduro and the Venezuelan people in the face of the “ferocious onslaught that is replayed today in several safe and stable countries, in an attempt to whip up chaos, spread foreign hegemony and seize the riches of these countries and their sensitive geopolitical positions.”
President al-Assad voiced Syria’s support to the ”road of peace charted by President Maduro in Venezuela,” wishing him success in shouldering the uphill tasks assigned to him at a critical stage the world is passing through.”
President al-Assad emphasized, in his letter, confidence in the victory of people’s will in determining the future of their own countries.
Six people have been killed in protests in Venezuela over the past week or so, which were sparked by ruinously high inflation and increasingly acute shortages of basic goods. Which is generally what happens when you try to run a country based on “world heritage principles and the historical legacy of Latin America’s great leaders,” as the American Left was praising Chàvez for doing just a year ago.