A month ago when the protests in Venezuela began I was
skeptical if they would be sustained. In the past four years there have been
many eruptions of protest, characterized by "cacerolazos," the public
banging of pots and pans, for the most part during the night. However, it
appears that the protests have reached a critical mass and the government’s
violent attempts to suppress peaceful protests has only served to stimulate
further demonstrations.
The protests go beyond the general unhappiness with food
shortages, high crime (murder rate is the highest in the world), inflation, and
abridgements of basic human rights. The protestors have called attention to the
black and silent hand of the Castro brothers at their control of the Venezuelan
government. When Maduro took office, I wrote of the suspicious circumstances
under which Chavez’s body was moved from Havana. It seemed pretty clear that
the Castro brothers were not happy with the idea of Diosdado Cabello, the
speaker of the Assembly taking over as president of Venezuela as required by
its constitution and instead helped Maduro usurp power. Mr. Cabello is a smart
man and posed a threat to Raúl’s ability to control Venezuela from Havana.
Maduro is not-so-smart bus driver who had training in Cuba when he was a young man, and his sole
qualification for public office was his blind loyalty to Chavez and to Fidel
Castro and a willingness to be a puppet to managed from Havana.
Now the bus driver is in charge and his attempts at
governance is pathetic and repressive and he has only succeeded in emboldening
the students who have taken to the streets in the tens of thousands. www.venezuelaanalysis.com,
which purports to be a neutral reporter of events in Venezuela features an
article about Maduro’s announcement of the government dedicating Bs40 million
for a national eco school to help combat eco vandalism by the opposition and
its alleged destruction of more than 5000 trees. There are more murders each
year in Venezuela than in the United States and all of the countries of
European Union combined. The
population of Venezuela is 29 million, with 3 million living in Caracas. In
Caracas, the murder rate is 200 per 100,000, roughly 6,000.
With all these
killings and thousands rioting in the streets, the bus driver thinks that
priority should be given to spending Bs40 million ($6,349,206 USD) to
counteract the destruction of 5000 trees. There is no toilet paper in the
stores and the government this week started issuing cards that will track what
shoppers can buy in the supermarkets, a short step away from rationing (shades
of Cuba). The bus driver needs to reexamine his priorities and realize it is time to get off the bus.
No comments:
Post a Comment