By Staff Writer
December 18, 2020
A Venezuelan parliamentarian is in self-imposed exile, fearing repercussions from the alleged state managed criminal cartel ran by Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, and will only return once verified and legitimate elections are held.
Armando Armas, congressman for district four of Anzoátegui estate, speaking to Caribbean Magazine Plus from an undisclosed location and reflecting on the December 6 elections that he calls a “joke”, where opposition parties were blocked from being candidates and why he had to leave the country, told us that: “They personally attacked me, many times physically in 2017. Then also two bomb threats.” Stories of Mr Armas being attacked has been reported by NBC News in the past.
The regime of Nicholas Maduro also raised the number of electoral spots to vie for in the December election, causing political parties to not have any candidates for the seats and stacking the odds against opposition parties as Maduro nearly doubled the amount of congressional seats to be contested at the December 6 national assembly elections.
Mr Armas also spoke more about his harassment by the Venezuelan police forces where he said there was another time Venezuelan police officers came to his house and he had received information about it from intelligence services inside the regime a day ahead. He added: “They wanted me to go missing, so I had to take actions very, very swiftly to get away. I wasn’t hiding in a place in Caracas and at some point I then managed to get out of the country.”
They also attacked his 76 year old mother three months ago, as he said military officers went inside her house with assault rifles, asking her for his whereabouts. They took her to a commando base for the Anti-extortion and Kidnapping National Commando (Comando Nacional Antiextorsión y Secuestro, CONAS) where they questioned her further about his whereabouts.
Mr Armas said the criminal organisation, the “Cartel of the Suns,” which he alleges is directing President Nicholas Maduro as much as he is directing them, is behind his death threats and attempts on his life. He said that this cartel is made up of senior government officials in Venezuela, primarily high ranking military members.
Mr Armas told us more about the Cartel of the Suns and said, “I call them the Miraflores cartel which is not actually right. Miraflores is the present name of the presidential palace, but most people that follow international public opinion calls it the cartel of the suns.”
“A sun is the symbol that higher ranking military officials, especially like generals, wear in their uniforms. After their stars, comes the suns and because not a small amount of high ranking military belong to this corrupt scheme, they are publically known by this name, the cartel of the suns.”
In the most recent past, drug cartels have been accused of assaulting and killing Guyanese nationals on the border between Venezuela and Guyana, something that has been widely reported. Mr Armas says that the drug cartels in conjunction with the Cartel of the Suns- something he also says is interchangeable- are responsible for these murders and controlling the “blood gold” pouring out of Venezuela.
The blood gold and murders at the border of Guyana and Venezuela has been denied vigorously by the Maduro administration, however, Guyanese reports do claim that his is true as scores of persons have turned up dead in the vicinity of the gold mines around the border area and witnesses attest to being harassed and assaulted by Venezuelans at the border.
Tensions at the border between Guyana and Venezuela have ramped up significantly, even more so that Guyana has decided to drill for its own oil. Something Venezuela claims is siphoning off of one of their oil wells.
These tensions at the border had caused the Brazilian government to come to the aid of Guyana in, 2018 by sending a delegation over to Suriname to discuss and pledge military assistance to Guyana and Suriname over their long-running border dispute with Venezuela. At that time in 2018, Guyana had dispatched Guyanese Defence Force (GDF) personnel to the Guyanese-Venezuelan border to monitor and possibly repel Venezuelan gangs that may destabilize and cause havoc in the South-American land-based Caribbean nation.
Doubting his security and safety where he is now Mr Armas said, “When you’re fighting against a transnational criminal entity power, I don’t think you can feel completely safe.” Further wanting to keep his location a secret for fear of reprisals against his family members back in Venezuela as well.
Mr Armas also said that he supports interim-President Juan Guaidó and said that right now the best thing Mr Guaidó can do is use the constitution of Venezuela and fight for new, free and fair elections. Something he claims will bring him back to the shores of his homeland as right now he has to participate in his elected duties via teleconferencing using Zoom and other teleconferencing mehods.
Mr Armas also calls for Caribbean countries to take a stand, and forget the money and support that the Maduro administration had given to the respective governments in the region and think about the damage that Maduro has done to Venezuela and the hurt he has put the Venezuelan people through. He understands that the Caribbean votes as a block sometimes on issues like this, so this is one time where they need to make the voting bloc count for something that will definitely help people who have been left disenfranchised and in his case, in exile from their own country.
Mr Armas also has high hopes for the incoming U.S. President Joe Biden to bring some much needed assistance for Venezuelans as he said that he was “encouraged” by comments made by President Biden’s secretary of state pick, Antony Blinken, when Blinken said in a recorded interview a while back when he acknowledged that the former Donald Trump administration was taking the right approach to Venezuela and the hard line it was taking against the Maduro administration.
The former Donald Trump administration had levied hefty sanctions against Venezuela and its officials, by blocking any sale or transport of the country’s oil shipments and charging several members of the Maduro cabinet with international drug trafficking charges, wanting their extradition to the United States.