How long can Maduro hold?

The annulation of the Amnesty Law was so predictable that I did not bother with a post. Twitter was enough. However, what is worth a post is a meditation on how long a kleptocracy cum drug trafficking regime can hold it together.

The first thing we must consider is that by now the regime makes no pretense whatsoever. Under Chavez, at least some minimal delay was held, when possible.  Some lengthy presidential cadena "predicted" what a wished for action of other "powers of the state" should happen, and a few days later, voilá! X got to jail, Y was expelled, Z was annulled.  Now progress has been made: Maduro asks for an opinion and within a couple of days the high court, TSJ, serves notice. Unanimously of course.

There is no pretense whatsoever, not even the occasional dissent vote in the bench. You know, they could take turns to say a nay out of 32 justices. Rulings are written even sloppier than they used to be. In fact we even wonder if the court takes the time to read the annulled law. I, for one, think that as soon as a given article is voted at the Assembly, some chavista sends it to the court to prepare the annulment before the final law is even voted. How else could the TSJ beat any speed ruling record observed in any democracy, or even dictatorship for all that I know?

It is not only the TSJ that is blunt about paying no attention to the Assembly or the opposition wishes. The illegal electoral board, CNE, is writing new rules as it goes to stop any electoral initiative from the opposition. That is, the Chavez regime who went from plebiscite to plebiscite is now in the no-election mode. See, Chavez made victory credible (albeit known cheating). Today everyone knows, even chavistas, that neither Maduro nor Cabello could get elected consejo comunal dog catcher.

There are two ways to understand what is going on. Of course, what I repeat all the time, the driving force here is that the regime cannot allow to hand in power to someone else because that would mean that scores of chavistas would soon find their way to jail. Thugs and criminals and narco-traffickers are not known to surrender peacefully to popular will, no matter how lopsided that one is.

Thus the question: is this a show of strength or a show of weakness?

The weakness is easy to demonstrate. The regime has its own polls, even if it refuses to acknowledge the real life poll of December 6 2015. Popular support is fading so fast that open air meetings are rarer, least someone would take a picture of the real attendance (not long until a drone is flown over a chavista real-rally?). Thus the regime is in survival mode, a mode where chutzpah is significantly enhanced along irresponsibility and all sorts of crazy. Yes, the regime is scared, but as in cornered dog scared, biting right and left.

But the show of strength is also easy to understand. This is a regime that is in it for the long run. It is a regime that has made peace with brute force. Already legal and psychological brute force is employed from holding political prisoners to annulling even a weather report voted at the Assembly. Physical force is not as well set yet but the training has been done as we can see from how 2014 protests were repressed, but also now how food riots are repressed these days.

In short, it is a regime that knows it has the weapons and that is the holder of its own truth, a truth of having the financial power to ensure the survival of a small elite which has robbed enough for it. Golden exile is not an option for many of them anymore, but they have stashed enough to pay all the mercenaries they will need to pay to stay in Venezuela and enjoy the riches of life even though the people that placed them into office are starving and dying of unspeakable diseases that normal countries have eradicated. In short, they have become such criminals that they are beyond good and evil, they are amoral, pitiless.

Which brings us to the longevity of such regimes. Considering the continuous degradation of the standard of living, the equilibrium point is when Catia and Petare will get so hungry that they are the ones that will be starting the opposition marches instead of Prados del Este. The date? I do not know, they are not hungry enough yet, not enough of their children have died yet. But the time will come, probably sooner than expected. After all, let's not forget  that no matter how military like Padrino, the defense minister, are associated to the corruption of the regime, when they give the order to shoot to the troop this one may not follow: the troop will know why the people are protesting because, well, it is their parents and brothers, and cousins...

I will remind the patient reader that there are historical precedents where the troop refused to follow generals orders, and that was that. I see no reason for Venezuela to be any different, the more so that the troop did not enjoy the booty that their generals grabbed.

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Tumeremo

The story that has been unfolding in the mining region of Bolivar state is yet a new low for the bolivarian regime. all corruptions, all abuses, all cruelty seem to have somehow managed to meet there.

I am not going to go into details. the executive summary is as follow.

Legal mining in Bolivar state has been progressively edged out under Chavez. What should have been organized gold search production ended up as illegal mining controlled by mafias and protected by the corrupt military of the area (who among other business controlled supply, gas contraband, etc.). And possibly Colombian guerrilla in Amazonas state.

The result has been what could one expect, and worse.

First, the are has become an ecological disaster as once pristine rivers straight out of the jungle where only a handful of natives lived are now containing mercury. The deforestation over a soil which has a difficult regeneration because it is a thin narrow layer of biomass (old ancient rock hard terrain) has been denounced repeatedly without any response form the authorities while the regime promoted its ecological brand, supported by many idiots in Europe and the US. Amen of the damage to the terrain itself through reckless wash out without any attempt as consolidation of the remains. Even the great national park that contains the highest water fall of the world is under threat.

Second, the human cost has been terrible. Never mention the garimpeiros coming from Brazil. Let's just focus on what has become a mere form of XXI century indented labor of all of these people forced to purchase supplies from military/gangs approved suppliers. It has been years since the locals and the Native Americans have been protesting, sometimes very actively. But no matter what may have been agreed the army went back to all its associations with thugs for their common racketeering business.

So, it thus came to pass. As the level of oil went down, so went down miscellaneous subsidies and so went down revenues from the illegal mining area.  Gang wars got worse and last week relatives reported the disparation of 28 miners, yet to be found. But tales of massacre by some survivors are now vox populi. The regime through its governor delayed quite a lot in accepting that there was a problem even going as far as saying that it was yet another media manipulation, even though the relatives were blocking in anger the main road to the South of the country.

The political problem here is that beyond the almost certain fact the the gang of El Topo did the deed, the ultimate guilt rests squarely at the feet of the Venezuelan Army for allowing all that traffic and to the feet of Bolivar governor, former military pal of Chavez, Rangel Gomez.

So, since this is now a political problem the regime has done what it knows best, condemn in another kangaroo trial the editor owner of the lone opposition paper of the area, Correo del Caroni, which has been following closely all the violence and corruption in the state. It is noteworthy that the trial had been dormant for months and suddenly in a couple of days it was revived and a sentence emitted against the paper in the middle of the night. Note that the people suing the paper for defamation, even though they actually served jail for corruption, are not linked to the mining violence. As it is always the case in Venezuela against the press a case is held languishing until the regime needs a favorable verdict at a given time.

That is why I wrote at the beginning of this blog entry that the mining situation in Bolivar is a microcosm of all that is wrong in Venezuela, from thug gang wars to extortion, from freedom of expression to an official lies system, from corruption to approved genocide.  Human rights violations in Bolivar may be the worse in Venezuela, and that is already saying something.

I cite a verse of French poet Aragon

[Tumeremo]
Là-bas où le destin de notre siècle saigne
(over there where our century's fate bleeds)

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Bewilderment

This is the feeling since I came back. First, I could not believe the visible degradation in supplies in a mere ten days. Today I did my first grocery shopping with my usual non regulated price items and it was, I kid you not, at least 25% above what I paid last time. More worryingly, since I still can afford for the time being, my deli was out of all but the strict basics. That is, no salami, no biscotto ham, etc...That already meager shelf when compared to more civilized countries was simply empty.

But the bewilderment was stronger as I started catching up with the politics. Oh my, oh my....

So many things have happened that it would be too long to come back on them. We had, for example, a show of force from the real owners of the jail systems, the pranes also known as "negative leaders". These mafia-thug-narco-whatever characters come and go from jail where they reside because, well, it is safer for them to reside in there. More protection from their body guards. One, "el conejo", the rabbit, went to a party and was shot on his way back to jail. Margarita was in turmoil as the pissed off inmates displayed even war weaponry with the public order unable to do much about it. Another one in Maracay got his lieutenant shot and demanded that the northern part of Maracay observe mourning the day of the funeral. All shops and schools had to close down, the police and army unable to protect them from the wrath of his supporters.

But that is not the only place where the regime is making water. On the political front it is not doing so good either. The opposition MUD is slowly but surely putting Maduro in a legal trap that will force this one to either kick the table and make a coup, or leave office. This is actually not hard: the National Assembly has simply started to doing its job which includes a review of laws, and its controlling function of holding hearings to ask ministers how the money is spent. That alone is sending the regime in a frenzy. Ministers are courting "desacato" which means that they are refusing to attend normal hearings (in particular the son in law of Chavez who probably thinks he is royalty) and thus risk sanctions that could go as far as brief jail stints.

Vituperation against the Assembly is reaching new heights, which is not good because the backroom negotiations that we know are taking place could be irremediably damaged. But then again this is what the pro Cuban radicals and the narco corrupt sectors want. The highest shriek was this week when Maduro publicly insulted in the vilest form Lorenzo Mendoza of the Polar group who had been too polite when he sent the message that the crisis was too bad to keep going at these silly games the regime was playing. The insults included direct threats. Threats also came from Diosdado Cabello.

What can we make of this?

First, the obvious, the regime is out of arguments and thus it uses procacious and violent words to silence adversaries. Classical. But if Chavez with oil at 100 could get away with it; Maduro with empty shelves and dead babies cannot.

Clearly there is a tug of war inside the regime that explains that exasperation, that refusal for any type of negotiation, or even recognition from the "establishment" of the regime towards the MUD. From their growing loss of privileges to the progressive realization that a lot of them will have to face the consequences of years of looting and assorted misdeeds comes that growing despair and political mistakes. I know, I have already stated such many times but I think this time it is different, the ground is shifting fast inside chavismo as the crisis is leaving no respite.

This is what I think is going on.

Maduro is the voice of Cuba. They are probably already not receiving the cash they used to receive but the Venezuelan situation now makes it nearly impossible to keep sending them anything. Either we starve or they do. I doubt that the military will accept to shoot at food riots to allow Maduro to keep sending Cuba's allowance. But the army has been infiltrated by a Cuban security. How do you deal with that?

Cabello and the narcos have rallied Maduro because at this point they have no other choice. For all practical purpose the National Assembly loss per se did not undo Cabello, the magnitude of the loss did it. You do not survive such a rejection and thus he is everyone's favorite scapegoat.

But the regime has again wasted precious time, two solid months without any sensible economic measures and things got worse. In fact we are learning that they are importing expensive and useless banknotes that will push further inflation while the remaining gold reserves are been negotiated to postpone by a couple of months default. The drop of Venezuelan bonds indicate clearly that all expect default before the end of the year. In other words, it is clear for all that the regime will not change its policies. It does not want to. It cannot do it. It would not know how to do it. And it does not has the people to do it anyway. We are stuck. Regime change or massive repression are the only options.

The MUD opposition, give or take a few, is doing the only thing it can do, stay as close as possible to the law. That is enough to push the regime over the brink. It has offered to negotiate a deal but it takes two to negotiate and this apparently will not happen now. Two months after the election surely we would have seen some semi solid evidence. No? Thus the opposition keeps pushing, opening the cracks inside chavismo, hoping, against all hope?, that some sensible group emerges.

One thing is certain, any civil war that may start will not start from the opposition but within chavismo. The opposition has no weapons, the factions of the regime have. Look at what happened with the pranes armies these past couple of weeks. They can start a war if they want. And the army knows that very well.

Meanwhile the army is deciding whether it will allow Cuba to starve Venezuelans.

This all will be played rather fast, if you ask me. We are talking weeks here.

Stay bewildered. It will help.

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