Venezuela Is in Crisis. So How Did Maduro Secure a Second Term?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-inauguration.html

by artur_makly • 8 years ago

23 21 8 years ago

nytimes.com

tabtab• 8 years ago

Why people vote for dodgy leaders is a big question these days.

candiodari• 8 years ago

In this case, not really:

1) economy destroyed to the point of famines. They promised food if they won the election and blocking of everything if they lost.

2) they attacked (including with machine guns) the opposition. Tortured opposition candidates. Forced others out of the country, ...

3) They attacked voters at polling stations.

4) They attacked the parliament, a number of parlementarians, and several judges, before, during and after counting the ballots.

I mean it's no mystery how these people got "elected": they didn't.

Nothing shows socialism like these people do: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/26/chavez-daughte...

mrguyorama• 8 years ago

Nothing shows socialism like these people do:

Are you suggesting there's never been a non-socialist dictatorship?

AnimalMuppet• 8 years ago

Why people vote for dodgy leaders the first time is a big question. But it's not the question the article is talking about.

Dodgy leaders, once in power, have ways of making it very hard for people to vote for anyone else the second time. If you arrest enough opposition leaders, and own the papers and TV, and control the vote counters, you can make it very difficult for anyone else to win the election.

I'm pretty sure Maduro is going to run Venezuela until the military decides that he has to go. And Maduro probably knows this - he certainly takes care to make sure that the military doesn't go hungry...

mc32• 8 years ago

I would print "vote" in quotation marks. It was not a free election at all. Opposition was stifled by jailing them (as well as members of the judiciary), and other means, and people were enticed to vote for his party by way of benefits.

What's more interesting than this actually fraudulent election is the attendance of fellow socialists like Evo Morales as well the new socialist president of Mexico. Obviously they believe in his cause when they lend it legitimacy by attending the ceremony.

geezerjay4• 8 years ago

Opposition was stifled by jailing them

And not to mention the assassinations.

Simulacra• 8 years ago

Corruption and totalitarian brutality. From China to Venezuela, it keeps dictators in power.

un-devmox2• 8 years ago

Especially in Venezuela where China and Russia help maintain that corruption and brutality.

duxup• 8 years ago

This is what scares me. Venezuela was doing "alright" (relatively of course, their economy was too dependent on oil) but chose a path of totalitarianism / Chávez's without apparent fraud ... some people chose this path. And no matter how much deeper a hole they dig, the folks in power manage to dig deeper... still supported by a good chunk of people.

smacktoward• 8 years ago

Venezuela was doing "alright" (relatively of course, their economy was too dependent on oil)

That bit about oil is a pretty significant caveat. Economists have spent many decades studying concepts like the "resource curse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse) -- the way that countries whose prosperity is disproportionately driven by the sale of natural resources (like, say, oil) tend to end up mired in poverty and autocracy -- and "Dutch disease" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease) -- the way that a booming resource-extraction sector tends to crowd out development of other economic sectors, like manufacturing and services. The Venezuelan economy under Chávez was virtually a case study on these ideas, as he rebuilt the entire economy on top of an upward surge in oil prices. When those prices collapsed, the whole system came down with it.

legitster• 8 years ago

I know it gets lots of accolades already, but "Why Nations Fail" can really help understand why these sorts of things happen.

A lot of people want to look at Venezuela as a place that used to be a progressive country with a strong welfare state, and now it's a broke regime. But it's easier to understand that they never were a progressive country - they never actually had a pluralistic division of power. For a solid decade they could divvy out the benefits of a high oil price. But when times got tough, citizens were not actually given a lot of rights or individual liberties.

To butcher a quote by Friedman (so take it with as many grain of salt as you want), "Countries that put equality before freedom often end up without much of either."

geezerjay4• 8 years ago

A lot of people want to look at Venezuela as a place that used to be a progressive country with a strong welfare state, and now it's a broke regime. But it's easier to understand that they never were a progressive country

Don't you mean they never were a true scotsman?

ivraatiems2• 8 years ago

It's not enough to just point out a possible fallacy. What's your contention as to why the statement "Venezuela was never actually a progressive country" is inaccurate?

The parent comment asserts 1) that progressive countries must have a pluralistic division of power, 2) that Venezuela didn't, 3) therefore, Venezuela was not actually a progressive country, even if it appears to be.

Which of those assertions are you challenging?

DeonPenny• 8 years ago

Basically he replaced the old congress with a puppet congress, gained control of the military, then cheated his way to it.

un-devmox2• 8 years ago

For the past week, a Venezuelan house painter has been working at my house. He immigrated to the U.S. 3 years ago. He was a police officer that refused to do the governments bidding, so he fled. As did ~500/700 that were in his police academy.

We just spent the past 2 hours talking about the past and present situations in his home country. I'm beside my self and ashamed that I've been so ignorant to what has been happening.

I don't even know what to say here or even where to begin.

bliblah• 8 years ago

I see a lot of ignorant comments here placing the blame solely on the US (despite the fact that sanctions didn't take place until 2015 and things were already really bad considering Chavez died in 2013 and Maduro is still struggling to get a grip on the country since then.

I visited Venezuela and my wife is from there and the truth is that the country relied on Oil to create a wonderful society where the was incredible poverty and excess wealth with many people in the Urban areas being "alright" in the middle but unaware of the plight that many people suffered. Chavez was a charismatic former military man that had already failed to perform a coup when he rose to power. He appealed to the poor and the soldiers unlike the ruling government and used this to rise to the top. Afterwards he just played his cards right making sure the poor and the military got their (tiny) share while he and his cronies became millionaires. The complete devastation of the economy lies squarely in the fact that they ran their national oil company to the ground and have nothing of value since every wealthy business owner fled or shut down during the last decade.

The fact that Maduro is still in power is a complete mystery to me but I am guessing he is still greasing the right palms but another Coup is coming soon, I can only hope that things improve

Venezuela Is in Crisis. So How Did Maduro Secure a Second Term?

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