Venezuela’s crackdown
A slow-motion coup
The authoritarian regime is becoming a naked dictatorship. The region must react
Feb 28th 2015 | From the print edition
VENEZUELA’S “Bolivarian” regime is lurching from authoritarianism to dictatorship. On February 19th it arrested the elected mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Antonio Ledezma. Then it moved to expel Julio Borges, a moderate opposition leader, from the National Assembly—a fate already suffered by his colleague, María Corina Machado, ejected last year. Leopoldo López, another opposition leader, has been in jail for a year and is now on trial. Almost half the opposition’s mayors now face legal action. The regime’s favourite charge to level at hostile politicians is plotting to overthrow the government, often in conspiracy with the United States. But it is the president, Nicolás Maduro, who is staging a coup against the last vestiges of democracy. Venezuelans call it an autogolpe, or “self-coup”.
Hugo Chávez, who created and presided over the Bolivarian state-socialist system until his death in 2013, was repeatedly elected by Venezuelans, thanks to windfall oil revenues and his rapport with the poor. He took his majority as a mandate to squeeze the life out of Venezuelan democracy, seizing control of the courts and the electoral authority, and suppressing opposition media. Latin America’s governments acquiesced partly because they acknowledged his popular support.
Mr Maduro, though, lacks Chávez’s charisma and political skills—and his luck with the oil price. Crackpot economic policies have brought food shortages, soaring inflation and rising poverty. Popular support for the president and government has collapsed to around 20%. In a fair contest, the opposition would be likely to win parliamentary elections due this year. It could then hold a referendum in 2016 to recall Mr Maduro.
Time to speak up
In one respect—repressing his opposition—Mr Maduro exceeds his former boss. Chávez let rivals challenge him in a free-ish vote. Mr Maduro locks them up. On February 24th a 14-year-old boy at a demonstration against the government was killed by a policeman’s rubber bullet. The policeman was arrested. But such incidents raise the likelihood that the confrontation between the regime and its critics will turn violent, providing an excuse for still more repression. To that end, the arrest of Mr Ledezma may have been intended to provoke a reprise of last year’s demonstrations against the government, in which 43 people on both sides of the conflict were killed. Those served only to strengthen Mr Maduro.
The prime responsibility for avoiding such violence lies with Mr Maduro. But both the opposition and Venezuela’s neighbours have a role in trying to keep the peace and rescuing democracy. Faced with the regime’s drift towards lawlessness, the opposition’s response should be to redouble its commitment to the rule of law. Mr Ledezma has called for non-violence. The opposition is pressing the electoral authority to set a date for the parliamentary vote.
The opposition deserves help. For too long Latin America has tolerated Venezuela’s abuse of democratic norms. The latest outrages have provoked expressions of concern from Brazil, the Organisation of American States and others. They must do more. They should demand the release of Mr Ledezma and Mr López and call for guarantees that the election will be fair. If they fail to get them, they should suspend Venezuela from regional groupings, such as the South American Union, which require their members to be democracies. The threat of becoming a pariah might just give Mr Maduro pause.
Read more at http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21645193-authoritarian-regime-becoming-naked-dictatorship-region-must-react-slow-motion#WJJSD8jEoIswEYoX.99
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Once again, Markle has no clue.
http://www.gregpalast.com/vaya-con-dios-hugo-chavez-mi-amigo/
"...So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times:
Just after Bush's inauguration in 2001, Chavez' congress voted in a new "Law of Hydrocarbons." Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.
But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula's prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70% was "no bueno." Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a royalty – just one percent – on "heavy" crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they'd now have to pay 16.6%.
Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.
On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation's Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela – giving a whole new meaning to the term, "corporate takeover."
U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed "President" and the leaders of the coup d'état.
Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters." I see.
With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.)
Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It's what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela's One Percent to violence.
In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the "ranchos," the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.
"He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course." She was disgusted by "them," the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)—and poor. Chavez, himself negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela's history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves "Spanish," to the dark-skinned masses.
While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,
"Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The ‘oil boom' we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn't see it."
But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers."..."
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