Venezuela’s democratic façade has completely crumbled

[Oele]

Today, Venezuela is the sick man of Latin America, buckling under chronic shortages of everything from food and toilet paper to medicine and freedom. Riots and looting have become commonplace, as hungry people vent their despair while the revolutionary elite lives in luxury, pausing now and then to order recruits to fire more tear gas into crowds desperate for food.

Not long ago, the regime that Hugo Chávez founded was an object of fascination for progressives worldwide, attracting its share of another-world-is-possible solidarity activists. Today, as the country sinks deeper into the Western Hemisphere’s most intractable political and economic crisis, the time has come to ask some hard questions about how this regime — so obviously thuggish in hindsight — could have conned so many international observers for so long.

Chávez was either admired as a progressive visionary who gave voice to the poor or dismissed as just another third-world buffoon. Reality was more complex than that: Chávez pioneered a new playbook for how to bask in global admiration even as he hollowed out democratic institutions on the sly.

Step one was his deft manipulation of elections. Chávez realized early that, as long as he kept holding and winning elections, nobody outside Venezuela would ask too many questions about what he did with his power in the interim. And so he mastered the paradoxical art of destroying democracy one election at a time.

more @ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/hugo-chavezs-long-con/2016/07/01/26e8b690-3f8c-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html

[JNelson6563]

1. I wonder how this will end.

I fear it will go like this...new government gets elected to a country in shambles. In desperation they turn to the predatory IMF and thus will begin the process of privatization of resources and, surprise, the masses will continue getting screwed but by new overlords. Hopefully not as badly..

[Oele]

2. Yes, I fear that as long as they keep on focussing on "oil wealth", they're f*cked.

Especially when the whole oil industry is managed by the government or a hand full of semi government companies. It's extremely difficult to get rid of that whole clientelism and corruption mindset without a real diversivication of the economy - no matter who is governing the country. Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine anything worse than chavism.

[Cayenne]

3. They had a life line and blew that to

Chavez did one thing right in getting back his countries gold. Maduro is the traitor that is selling back to the bankers! If I could be dictator for Venezuela I would have crashed the whole financial system, ran out the bankers, and restarted with a gold backed currency. A gold backed currency would have the local economy moving forward again. Gold coins would be about 10% gold. The people would at least have the wealth of the country in their hands.

[Marksman_91]

4. The Ven. Natl Guard just killed a baby due to asfixiation from their tear gas grenades

At least that's what the Venezuelan Twitter feed is telling me. They started opening fire at a protest from people who are hungry. These are happening with more and more frequency every day. It's almost like a country at war with itself (if it's not already.) Man, Maduro can't leave power soon enough.