Saturday 16 August 2014

Repression in Venezuela - slowly sinking state August 2014


The government got yet another regime-critical programme out of the air. Fewer and fewer media outlets have anything critical to say about the government.

Recently several Europeans asked me what was going on in Venezuela. They hadn't heard anything after April. I told them: the main leaders are in jail and thousands of students have to report to the cops every week.

Here you can read more about that (in Spanish). By the way: both links are from Notitarde, one of the few remaining newspapers to dare criticise the regime.

The government will keep increasing repression. It doesn't have another plan for the simple reason most of the high ranking officials are thugs, criminals with a lot of skeletons in the closet.

The rest of the world won't lift a finger: countries have either a nice trade surplus with Venezuela or, in the case of the USA or China, they think regime change would create more headaches for them.

The Central Bank of Venezuela, completely under control of the executive, hasn't published its inflation or GDP figures since May. It is completely paralyzed just as Maduro and Diosdado are paralyzed out of fear of losing power and out of ignorance about how to manage a country.

The opposition that is not in prison? It is in a mess. None of our politicians wants to go to jail like Leopoldo López.

In a coming post I will try to get a little bit deeper into what kind of GDP Venezuela will finally get for 2014. We have already said ECLAC's latest estimate is -0.5%, which seems to a lot of people an incredibly optimistic figure.


2 comments:

  1. Certainly agree with you on most points. However, it seems to me that the reason that the USA has not done anything is based more on some general sense of apathy toward meddling in more Latin American affairs and the fact the USA's attention, rightly or wrongly, is focused half a world away on terrorism and religious wars. We seem to have stood by and watched as Cuba infiltrated Venezuela, albeit at the request of the current Chavez/Maduro regime. If the USA has to "lead/assist" in a regime chance, then yes, it might create another headache for the USA. China has no desire, I believe to see a regime change....why would they? They have a nice oil trade going and can continue to contribute to the foreign debt of Venezuela and therefore control their "leaders" actions.

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    1. I think the case of the US is a bit more complicated. A country as large as the US with very independent powers is usually the sum of very different, often conflicting strategies.
      Sometimes they are at a loss, sometimes those who want to convey the stronger messages are not the most admired in Latin America.

      I understand the US has a rather difficult position, with all the record it has in Latin America.To some extent, the US is doing something that might accelerate Madurismo's demise: getting less and less oil from
      Venezuela. It is a pity Rubio's bill was not approved because of that Democrat character Landrieu, but I think they could have foreseen that case and put her to shame.

      China will do a lot to try to keep this regime as long as possible, the same as Russia.

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