Have Some Maduro, M’Dear

 

In the last two and a half decades, the radical leftwing, populist, governmental power in the Western Hemisphere was not, as MAGA reports, the Democratic Party. Nor was it even the post-Castro Cuba, for which then-president Donald Trump returned to sanctions and a curtailed rights for Americans to visit. It was oil rich Venezuela, a nation where blatant political corruption led to a leftwing populist election sweep. In 1998, Hugo Chávez, a military leader who helped pioneer a new form of Latin American socialism, was elected President.

Eschewing ties with capitalist America (the “enemy”), Chávez began a series of populist reforms, nationalizing foreign holdings, that provided interim benefits for impoverished citizens but slowly, after a wild and seemingly successful start, the economy began eroding. Social benefits exceeded the country’s ability to pay, repression became a primary tool of the new government, and the US began a long period of economic warfare with Caracas. Inflation soared. Food was unaffordable, just as employment numbers – workers and wages – plummeted.

As Julie Turkewitz, writing for the July 31st The Morning (NY Times new feed) says: “[As success mounted,] Eventually, [Chávez] began to call his movement a socialist revolution — and it was enormously popular. Oil prices had rebounded by the 2000s, and the country was flush with cash. The state expanded free education and medical care. Poverty declined. His movement won election after election.

“In 2013, Chávez died. But he left behind a hollowed-out democracy. I’ve spent recent months speaking to political analysts and former officials in his government to understand what went wrong. They all cite a few problems. Chávez’s quest to remove the barriers between himself and his people helped erect a cult of personality.”

His vice president, former union activist Nicolás Maduro, took over, enjoying repression as his pathway to become an irreplaceable “personality cult” dictator. Trying to step into Chávez’ following, he began bumbling and stumbling. Corruption returned in spades. Life in Venezuela deteriorated fast and stayed horrible. US sanctions and a general global understanding of Maduro’s unsavory practices further tanked an enfeebled economy. 8 million Venezuelans left the country, many of whom wound up on our southern border. Maduro’s repression only escalated.

Finally, to encourage the US to moderate, even drop the crippling sanctions that hit Venezuela’s oil business hard, Maduro pledged to mount “free and fair elections,” which were conducted in late July. Few believed the results when Maduro released the official results: he squeaked by with a 51% majority.

As the above post-election photograph suggests, those results were not accepted by vast hordes of citizens… a sentiment echoed all over South America… and the United States. Venezuelan cities “were on fire” according to most observers. Pressure for transparency rose fast, both domestically and all over the world. Maduro responded with military force, more than a dozen people were killed and almost a thousand protestors were arrested. Although enough time had passed since the election for Maduro’s operatives to have created fake tallies, the cries for access to those voting records only rose.

Writing for the August 1st BBC.com, Ione Wells and Vanessa Buschschlüter reported: “Speaking to journalists on Wednesday [7/31], Mr Maduro said again that his government’s reason for not publishing the electoral results was because of a ‘hack’ on the electoral council website… He also claimed he had ‘proof’ that the opposition leader, María Corina Machado [herself not the opposition candidate, banned from running by Maduro], was behind ‘violence’… He alleged that protesters were ‘attacking’ the constitution and asked the Supreme Court to take action, which could pave the way for more mass arrests of opposition figures or protesters.

“Top US diplomat for Latin America, Brian Nichols, said the evidence showed President Maduro overwhelmingly lost by ‘millions’ of votes - endorsing vote tallies released by his opponents…. ‘The tabulation of these detailed results clearly show an irrefutable result: [Candidate] Edmundo González won with 67% of these votes compared to 30% for Maduro,’ he said in remarks at an Organisation of American States (OAS) meeting, AFP reported… ‘While not a total result, there are not enough votes in remaining tally sheets... to overcome such a deficit,’ he continued.” That such a wildly unpopular president could win that election simply defied common sense.

This autocrat followed the book on autocracy. Indeed, before the election, Maduro predicted massive “bloodshed” if he did not prevail. Hmmm? Where have we heard that assessment recently… right here in the United States? The exit polls and other metrics showed a Maduro victory was simply not possible. “The opposition said it had collected data from 73% of the country’s voting stations on its own and compiled it in a publicly accessible database on Tuesday [7/30]. Using their national identification, Venezuelans can sign in and review a scanned tally sheet from their voting station showing how many votes went to each candidate. The opposition says the database shows that their candidate, González, received 6.3 million votes to 2.8 million for Maduro…

“The Venezuelan opposition has moved to show concrete evidence that the election was stolen. Polls showed that González was leading by 25 percentage points or more in the days before the voting, but the regime-controlled election council declared Maduro the winner with 80% of the vote counted, saying he had won 51%.” Wall Street Journal, August 1st. Indeed, this election was stolen from within. Once again, in a flourish of ostentation mixed with violent repression, another “democratically elected” dictator simply refused to accept his own unpopularity… and accurate election results. If you look at Donald Trump’s pledges on taxes, tariffs, regulations and limits on personal freedom, no matter what Trump promises as so much better, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the impossibility of his platform working out for the best, at any level.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I truly hope that the United States of America does not replace Venezuela as the largest failed populist nation in the Western Hemisphere… no mean feat but a very possible result depending on the November election results.