U.N. makes fool of itself rewarding Venezuela

What a joke! Venezuela, a country facing severe food shortages where people have to make long lines in hopes of finding milk, flour or coffee, has just received an award from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization for its allegedly great success in combating hunger.

When I first read that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was describing the FAO award as a historic achievement by his government, my first reaction was to think that Maduro was making this up.

After all, this is the president who has said he was communicating with late president Hugo Chavez through a little bird, and who claims that Venezuela — which has the world’s highest inflation rate and Latin America’s worst performing economy — is an economic model for the rest of the world.

But in a telephone interview with a senior FAO official at the organization’s headquarters in Rome, I learned that the U.N. group had indeed bestowed the award to Venezuela and to 71 other countries at a ceremony during the 39th United Nations Conference for Food and Agriculture held last week in Rome.

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