Chavismo going berserk

A lot of people are doubting more and more the legitimacy of Chavismo. The country is experiencing a murder rate more than three times what it had when Chavismo came to power. Inflation is the highest in the hemisphere. Corruption is rampant. And people saw how Chavismo used state resources on a massive scale to mobilize voters and how it threatened whoever was receiving social benefits less they didn't vote for Chávez's Anointed One, Maduro.

Maduro can hardly speak. It's not that he cannot speak according to the standards expected from formal education. He cannot speak like my illiterate but vocal grandmother or like the average functionary or farmer or whatever. Even his tweets, which are probably spelled-checked by someone else, are full of punctuation errors. They often look as if they had been written by a 7-year old.

And Chavismo is unsure. Maduro is now repeating Chávez mantra about assasination attempts. He and the apparatchiks repeat ad nauseam the usual extreme left view that all their enemies are "fascists". High ranking government officials declare public employees who become "belligerent" - you can be so by simply expressing your political views or by being part of an opposition party - will be sacked.

The minister of "the popular power for Prison Affairs", Iris Valera, stated that opposition leader Henrique Capriles will end up in jail. Neither the Judiciary nor any other public institution will call her to order. San Diego mayor Scarano is being prosecuted at this moment. Lara governor Henry Falcón is receiving threats all the time. Chavismo will now financially choke the local opposition governments.

As Miguel wrote, Maduro is an insecure man who doesn't dare to change the government put up by his mentor.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) must replace three of its board members by 29 April, that's the law. One of those them is the only one who was not a puppet to the current government. The other two are rabid Chavismo implementers. They were even official PSUV directors who just stepped down from their function at the PSUV and officially "unregistered" from the party in order to "prove" they could be neutral arbiters within the CNE. Of course they never did anything but protect the government. Their replacements will need to be approved by two thirds of the National Assembly, but Chavismo does not have such a majority. Chances are Chavismo won't be willing to discuss anything with the opposition. The puppet National Electoral Council has declared the auditing it promised won't include the actual counting of paper ballots, which shows paper trail is actually worthless, even if useful idiots of Chavismo abroad kept saying this system was specially valid because of that paper trail.

Now everyone knows that at least half the population is against this government and chances are many more will turn against it. We have thought pot-banging was a little bit pointless, just catharsis. But we get reports that pots have been banged a lot in places such as 23 de Enero and Los Guayos, very pro-Chavismo regions.

We are living dangerous times. Russian weapon dealers have earned billions with Chavismo. Almost every single South American country and several Caribbean and Central American countries have developed a healthy trade surplus with Venezuela, which has a highly overvalued currency and a government completely against its own private sector. They are very happy with things as they are now: money trumps everything for them. The Cuban security service has infiltrated Venezuela. But only oil has kept this government in place. And oil prices, although still high, do not keep rising.

The opposition feels more sure of itself, but it needs to be very cautious. The government is made up of dangerous people who have a lot to fear for the way they misused power.