Three Years of Maduro: Venezuelan Power Plays or Popular Power?

[Judi Lynn]

April 7, 2016
Three Years of Maduro: Venezuelan Power Plays or Popular Power?

by Chris Gilbert

Many people think that Nicolás Maduro has done very little in his three years as president of Venezuela. But that is false. In fact, he has moved mountains. The first mountain that Maduro pushed aside was Rafael Ramírez. Who would have thought that Ramírez, the eternal Petroleum Minister, could be displaced? But Maduro did that a year and half ago, sending him to a golden exile in New York, where he now heads up Venezuela’s UN delegation.

Maduro also set about playing cat and mouse with Elías Jaua, the most left-leaning of the major figures who survived Chávez. Maduro took Jaua down and raised him up several times in succession, leaving his one-time rival with a clear message about who was in charge. Maduro also weathered Jorge Giordani’s harsh criticism and resignation, positioning himself sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right of the ex-Minister of Finance and personal friend of Chávez. Finally, the most recent of these impressive power plays is Maduro’s neutralizing of his one-time best ally, Diosdado Cabello, said to be the most powerful man in the country.

“Look at what Maduro does and not at what he says,” should be the mantra of people who fall into the trap of listing the president’s verbal proposals and then proving – since so few have come to life – that he is an incompetent leader. Now, it is an entirely different question whether all this jockeying is actually good for something, and more specifically if it is useful to the Venezuelan people and the revolution.

One answer is that, beyond considerations of mere utility, centralizing power is simply necessary in this context. Venezuela is a country with a precarious command structure and weak institutions. For that reason, the president must establish his control by defeating other power fractions, if he is to undertake any activity, revolutionary or otherwise. Hugo Chávez had this sort of control, in part because he had achieved moral authority through actions such as the failed 4F uprising in 1992 and his courageous stance following it. Yet Chávez also used methods similar to Maduro’s to displace figure such as Alberto Müller Rojas and Raúl Baduel.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/07/three-years-of-maduro-venezuelan-power-plays-or-popular-power/

[MADem]

1. Even the "revolutionary enthusiasts" call that guy MANURO. Hugo Chavez, he ain't. nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. You refer to yourself as a "revolutionary enthusiast?" That's quite a stretch, isn't it?

For some people, the only revolutions which are acceptable are the ones which allow glow-in-the-dark white people to destroy nearly all the native citizens across an entire continent, steal their land, and keep the tiny few in the worst places left anywhere, the wasted, unworkable, featureless land completely unwanted by the people who look like blisters walkin'.

The winners always write the history books, and the buttheads are the ones who believe them.

[Marksman_91]

2. Nonsense spoken by ideologically blinded marxists from an extremely left-leaning site

The people who write for this utterly biased publication refuse to accept reality for what it is and always try to blame external forces for the failures of leftist governments other than those governments themselves. Not surprising that this is one of your favorite sources to cite then.