Former London Mayor: Venezuela in Crisis as Chavez ‘Didn’t Kill All the Oligarchs’

LONDON (AFP) – Outspoken former London mayor Ken Livingstone on Thursday suggested that one of the causes of Venezuela’s current crisis was that former president Hugo Chavez “didn’t kill all the oligarchs”.

“There are real problems and (current President Nicolas) Maduro’s got to tackle them,” said the left-wing politician, who is currently suspended from the main opposition Labour party for saying Adolf Hitler was initially “supporting Zionism”.

“But one of the things that Chavez did, when he came to power — he didn’t kill all the oligarchs,” Livingstone told TalkRadio.

“There’s about 200 families that control 80 percent of the wealth in Venezuela, he allowed them to live, to carry on, and I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports, medicines and food to make it difficult and undermine Maduro.”

When asked whether there would be no crisis if the oligarchs had been killed, he said “they wouldn’t be able to undermine the present government”, but said he was “not in favour of killing anyone”.

Livingstone was London mayor between 2000 and 2008, overseeing the city’s response to the 7/7 suicide bombings, but has long been a controversial figure.

Almost half of Labour MPs signed a letter to party leader Jeremy Corbyn in April condemning the failure to expel Livingstone over his Zionism comments. He was suspended pending an investigation.

Maduro faces mounting accusations of trampling on democracy in Venezuela with Sunday’s controversial election for an all-powerful “Constituent Assembly”.

The country has been rocked by four months of clashes at anti-Maduro protests that have left more than 125 people dead.

Livingstone, who as mayor negotiated a deal with Chavez for Venezuela to supply the fuel for London’s buses, was asked earlier this week if he still supported Maduro, and told The Times: “Oh God, yes.”

On Thursday, he also blamed the United States for the situation, saying: “I suspect we’ll discover that a lot of this crisis has been engineered, as it was in Brazil in ’64, in Argentina, in Chile.”

Veteran socialist Corbyn, riding high after far exceeding expectations in June’s general election, has come under pressure to criticise Maduro after having previously called him “an inspiration to all of us”