Violence? Civil War? Military Coup?

The second day now of clanging pots and pans all over the country. I am away from my home trying to flee the horrible mood at the compound. The vice-president of the compound resigned this morning after having received verbal insults and threats from some of my neighbors with Madurist sympathies. I am so angry at the violence, the fascist attitude of this regime, that I cannot believe that some of the European left are still supporting Maduro and his thugs (who seriously wounded an opposition MP in a parliament session today). I really cannot believe that the democratic countries are still waiting - for what? The votes won't be recounted. Capriles is unable to speak to the nation. His protest march due for tomorrow had to be cancelled because Maduro forbade it. The ones who call Capriles and his followers fascists, are a textbook example of what crude fascism really is.

From Venezuela I call upon the world, as long as I am still able to access Blogger, to start moving against this regime. We have no proof yet that Maduro's powerful state apparatus left behind by Chavez, has cheated in the election. But the smoking guns are everywhere, and the regime's reaction to insistent calls to come clear and out into the open, are repression, threats and insults, all encased by a approaching economic catastrophe.

This could mean to a certain extent widespread civil unrest, although I don't see any real civil war erupt in Venezuela. But the military have been strangely silent these days. Many sense something is cooking over there. It won't be the first time in Venezuelan history the army steps in with an own agenda.

My First Cacerolazo

Yesterday evening, just after having published my last blog entry, we had a major blackout which lasted for almost 2 hours. In all the years I have lived at my place here, it was the first time it lasted that long.

About ten minutes later, in pitch-black darkness outside with only two candles to show us where we were, a second thing happened which I had never experienced before at our compound. It started with two or three rattling pots and kettles, and soon after most of our neighbors were rattling away, in protest and frustration over what is happening in this country. As most of my neighbors are Chavists, many of them holding a government job, it struck us.

In the pandemonium, my wife grabbed a pan as well - something which I never have seen in the seven years we are together - and started making noise too. The pandemonium of pots, pans, kettles, vuvuzelas and jeering was eerie. It lasted about two hours and stopped well after power supply was reestablished.

I grabbed a pot too, and for the first time, I was actually taking part in what was probably one of the biggest civic actions till now against the Maduro regime. I managed to unload some of the frustration and the anger by beating on the pot. It felt good. Although at the same time I felt like a little ant making a point against an enormous monster, it was a statement, for me and for my many neighbors who felt the same.

Unrests in Caracas, Barquisimeto, Merida and many other cities all over the country. Clashes in Valencia between protesters and the Guardia Nacional, wounded and burning cars on the highway. People are so tired of what is happening here. We all know - even the Chavists - that Venezuela needs a government of comprehensive action, of national unity to avert the economic catastrophe coming towards us, caused by the same irresponsible Chavist government thinking only of staying in power by giving away money to half the world, leaving almost nothing to the country itself. But Maduro, who proclaimed himself president yesterday with his back turned to half the nation, wants confrontation. I think this idiot wants blood on the streets so that it can give this wannabe ruler the excuse to start acting like a dictator. Capriles has called to the cacerolazo at 8 pm - the one we all participated in, and which was an enormous succes nation-wide - and for avoiding any confrontation with the powers of the state.

While we were walking outside, in the dark we suddenly saw a group of motorized thugs wearing Maduro shirts, looking mean and observing what was happening. In the middle of our compound. Such motorized gangs are terrorizing protesting communities at the moment, even attacking them, as it happened in many places yesterday night. We walked on, not too happy.

What happened to the vote recount? All international organizations, the EU, the US and the OAS have called for a recount of votes. As I am writing these words, the Venezuelan government is busy burning the votes. Forget the recount, forget Maduro's promises. The CNE cynically has referred the opposition to make a claim at the tribunals, of which we all know are under control of the Chavist government. We know that Capriles under these circumstances, has very little chances to achieve anything.

And so, this "government of the people" has staged a slow-time coup d'etat, stealed the elections, broken every law concerned, every article in the constitution, beat up peaceful protesters through its paid street gangs, and is quickly becoming more and more a carbon copy of the regimes of Syria, Byelorussia and Cuba. And keeping the world's conscience quiet with enormous amounts of petrodollars, while Venezuela itself is falling to pieces.

Some world we live in. I feel alone, abandoned and laughed at. While my only goal is to build up a peaceful, productive life in this country. Under Marxist parameters however, it will become impossible in the long run. And as the world looks the other way, Venezuela is applying for membership of the club of authoritarian, totalitarian governments.

Cuba, the broke island filled with jobless people with no future at all - Socialist Sea of Happiness - can sleep quietly again. Venezuelan oil will keep feeding that starved country while the Castrist elite can count on more millions of dollars coming their way, while the rest of the population rots away either in their crumbling houses or in a stinking prison cell. And we are going the same way, in Venezuela.

I am living in a Cold War nightmare.

One Big Freaking Mess

At this moment, Venezuela is burning. There are many unrests in the major cities. According to the official CNE election results, Capriles lost by almost a point to Maduro. Capriles maintains that he is the real winner, with the acts in his hands and at least 3000 denouncements of serious electoral incidents, all without any exception perpetrated by Chavist gangs - and all ignored without exception by the CNE that claimed there were "no incidents". Many of these incidents are recorded on video, one specially remarkable one was that of a presumed Cuban that was grabbed by a furious crowd in flagranti with over 40 different ID cards in his possession, trying to vote again and again. Guess for whom. Right.

I was planning to go to Caracas today but couldn't, because with the street unrests, who could give me the guarantee that before we all know it, the authorities might impose a curfew and condemn me to stay an involuntary night in Gotham City.

Meanwhile, both candidates yesterday evening agreed that with the completely polarized election results, and Capriles' claim that the election results are falsified by almost a million votes, there would be a 100% recount of all votes. That didn't stop the highly controversial CNE to proclaim Maduro winner of the presidential election.

Maduro, which has totally ruled out to dialogue with the other 50% of the country that voted against him, is set on a confrontation. Capriles seems to have accepted the challenge, and so, with one half of the country not recognizing Maduro as president, and with the world waiting to wish him the best - meaning they haven't recognized the Maduro government till it becomes clear what the real results are - Venezuela is bound to become a disorderly mess the coming weeks. Add to that the disastrous economic situation, confirmed rumors of a third devaluation coming our way, and an increasing shortage of basic goods maybe going up to 50%, and you wouldn't want to be in Maduro's nor Capriles' shoes.

To make things even more sparking, the first signs of dissent within the Chavist ranks have popped up.

I am glad the internet is up after the authorities shut it down yesterday evening citing "hackers" as the cause. I will keep you posted, but if you don't read anything tomorrow, blame the connection. Or serious shit coming our way.

One Day Left

Venezuela is one day away from the presidential elections. I am sitting on my bed, typing away and watching national TV at the same time.

Since yesterday national networks are not allowed to make publicity for any candidate. Venevision, Televen, Globovision and Vale TV adhere 100% to that ruling. The ones who do not, are the state networks VTV, TeleSur, VIVE, Avila TV and ANTV. They keep on broadcasting political ads cunningly using the figure of Hugo Chavez in clear reference to its avatar Nicolas Maduro.

The opposition party alliance MUD has already denounced this. But it is expected the electoral committee CNE won't do anything about this, as they haven't done anything about the more than 100 denunciations against the government abuses of the campaign.

Colombian ex-president Pastrana has made clear what other foreign politicians have not: the Venezuelan elections are rifed with government abuse, using state recourses and the help of strawmen on key juridical posts to force their way, bent their own laws and rules and at the same time enforcing them on their opponents. Capriles has fought an uphill battle right from the start, and in view of this, his progress has been admirable and hope-giving.

Witout becoming stereotypical, let me draw a picture for you what Venezuela would look like if Maduro wins these elections without fraud. It will beome a new, updated version of the Castrist dictatorship on Cuba. Already Maduro's henchmen in judge robes are moving to prepare criminal prosecutions against all head figures of the opposition. It is to be expected that if Maduro wins, most if not all of the opposition leaders will end up in jail on bogus and trumped-up charges of whatever the law gives as options. Venezuela will slither down more and more in squalid poverty reminiscent of that in communist-rules countries like the former East Block, Byelorussia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and as an extreme example, North Korea. Repression will become stronger and even brutal, its enforcement in the hands of red-shirted gangs with the police looking the other way - something that is already happening for years. Dissent is already punished for years by not being hired in any state job, and if the Chavist government keep on following its master plan laid down in 2004, no private employment will be possible in the future. The message in a Socialist Venezuela will then be: adapt or die.

It has angered me that journalists that I have spoken with in Venezuela, even one reporting to one of the biggest global networks, haven't paid any heed to my words, that sadly have become truth over the years. The picture of Cuba as a benevolent Marxist state pushed to extremes by US imperialism is fabricated by the Castrist regime to hide its true monstrosity from the world. I have tasted this system here, designed to castrate whole populations as they have done it on Cuba, and it is my sincere hope that the world will wake up and realize that no appeasement, no compromise will do to effect any change to those countries. This system, expert in mind manipulation, must be exposed, denounced like nazism in its day, and barred for ever from taking part in political life. The case of the FARC in Colombia is exemplary. Disguising as sheep, the wolves try to make their way into Colombian politics only to take them over eventually and install their own brand of Marxist despotic rule.

Do I sound like Margaret Thatcher? To those people, the Cold War isn't over yet. You are warned.

Latest News On The Elections

Yesterday night was the closure of the very unique and controversial presidential election campaign in Venezuela. Maduro made the "best" of it claiming he is the president of what can be translated as the "scum of the earth", and that he would build schools for "mongoloid" children - verbatim. His folksy and crude way of expressing himself, a trademark of these elections (Capriles, an upper-class technocrat with a socialdemocrat streak, also adopted this), have struck raw nerves even among moderate Chavists who still support him.

Foreign publications maintain, till now, that Capriles is lagging in the latest polls and that Maduro will become the sure winner of these elections. In view of the bleak economic outlook, it strikes me why so few foreign journalists bother to ask the "why" question. The 100 days of the Maduro regime - following the suspicious death of Hugo Chavez at the hands of Cuban doctors - have been disastrous, and I can tell you this first-hand. The violence, connected or not to the election, has been unusually high. But not a word of this is found in foreign reports on the Venezuelan elections.

From what I know, I can state that Capriles has outrun Maduro in the latest tracking polls. The publication of the latest numbers is not allowed by Venezuelan electoral law, but the genuine enthusiasm found among the hundreds of thousands of Capriles followers who braved blistering sun and heat to listen to his speeches, has contrasted more and more with the forced jeering of obligated attendees to Maduro´s rallies, clad all in red and driven from all over the country in state-owned busses, of whom many yesterday took the chance of being in the capital to do some strolling-around in the busy shopping malls.

I personally believe the elections wil be a very close call. The Election Commitee CNE, although supposed to be impartial, has shown the opposite, drawing some heavy fire from the opposition. The regime will do everything to win these crucial elections, so cheating won´t be excluded. Opposition sympathizers, who number at least 6,5 million (the number who voted for Capriles last fall) smell victory for their candidate.

I will keep you posted.

The Plot Thickens

I haven't written my blog for some time because first of all, internet connection in Venezuela is not good at the moment. Partly to blame are the forest and bush fires sprouting all over the country. Most of them are the result of arson. Yesterday the Canaima National Park caught fire, and at some point of the day it was reported that the Auyantepuy, one of the most characteristic natural landmarks on this planet, was shrouded in smoke and flames. Every day as I drive over the main highway ARC, I see with pain in my heart how whole sections of natural landscape are being devoured by enormous fires, all of them close to human settlements and all of them lit by human hand. Needless to say, nature suffers a great deal, and many sloths, iguanas and other inhabitants of virgin forest zones are dying or forced to flee, only to be run over by drivers without any conscience.

The destruction of Venezuelan nature is only symptomatic of what is happening in the country in the days prior to the second presidential election in 6 months. Following the enigmatic death of Hugo Chavez - of which the truth will emerge sooner or later - his successor, the Cuban-backed Nicolas Maduro, has enjoyed a month-long advantage over Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate, who only half a year ago lost to Hugo Chavez and has since then struggled to regain his popularity. Maduro has been able to exploit public grief over Chavez' death to push himself in the limelight as the new leader.

The disastrous economic decisions taken by the Maduro regime in the last 100 days have, however, started to tilt popular preference towards Capriles. Maduro's fetishism with the dead Chavez, stating aloud that he is the real son of the dead Comandante, has alienated more and more chavists who see the playing-around with Chavez' body, name and legacy as plain disrespect towards their dead leader. He is constantly seen as hiding behind Chavez, which is raising more and more questions among the Chavist population about who the real presidential candidate really is. It all sounds and looks like a necromantic spectacle from a very cheap vampire movie.

And there is more. Maduro's stupid homophobic remarks, trying to show Capriles as gay in a macho society, are working against him now. His total ignorance of even the country's geography, triggering a whole wave of ridicule and bitter jokes about his supposed lack of intelligence, are steadily eroding popular support for the Chavist side. The regime's attempts to link Capriles to a supposed plan to murder Maduro, assisted by a complacent leftist Salvadorian government on the payroll of Caracas, are drawing few believers even among Chavist supporters.

All in all, Maduro's initial advantage has been eroding thanks to his unwise decision, words and actions. Even in spite of his resources, buying and bribing consciences, he gets fewer and fewer persons on his side.

Meanwhile, the initially insecure Capriles has been skyrocketing to new heights. As a public orator, he is drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters nation-wide, daily. His proposals are clear: end the corruption, end the giving away of billions in exchange for political backing elsewhere, restructure the economy, fight crime (which is now whopping at unknown heights), and restore parliamentary democracy and the balance of powers. It will mean probably the end of Castrist rule on Cuba, and problems in cashflow with leftist-populist governments such as Nicaragua and Bolivia. And herald a new era in Venezuela, after more than 20 years of political and social unrest.

Analysts predict a close draw in the elections next Sunday with both candidates having equal chances. Judging by what I hear and see on the streets, I think Capriles has a very big chance of winning. His charisma has been compared to that of Chavez in 1998. He is moving humble hearts as well as minds, offering them hope. His task is being helped by the abysmal performance of the Maduro regime.

I hope that my next entry can start with the sentence "Capriles won". I will tell you all about it after this Sunday. Have a great weekend.

Long, Hot Summer

Damn it´s hot. Excuse my French but I can´t think of any other way of expressing my disgust at the endless row of hot, steamy days accompanied by the acrid smell of bush and forest fires all around you. True, it´s a special sight to drive along the Autopista Regional del Centro at night and see the pitch black dark lightened up by roaring fires all around you. But it´s sad. Most of the fires are man-made, senseless people lightening up candles at some shrine and leaving the lit candles all in the middle of scorched grass. It makes you wonder whether people here are pyromans or just plain senseless.

Anyhow, this is the background to a country in escalating frenzy after the death of Hugo Chavez. Some people are walking around like out-of-season Santa´s in red chavista uniform, struttin´ their stuff as they say. Others are just getting on the street for the necessary shopping. The streets in the old western part of Caracas - Quinta Crespo, Santa Teresa, San Juan and El Paraiso - are not that full, but you clearly sense that some people are out looking for trouble. So people like me avoid the streets, buy enough for at least a week (this also to avoid looking at empty shelves when you need something and there isn´t any), just try to stay at home. The mood in Venezuela is maddening, to say the least. Even when you don´t watch any news, don´t follow any political events, the moment you walk on the streets you bump into crowds of frenzied red-shirted bikeriders and look at the electoral propaganda of Nicolas Maduro hanging by magic from every lamppost in the city. The word "Maduro" is there alright on the posters, but I see the face of Hugo Chavez and Chavez´signature beneath it. As if from the underworld Chavez is still running for president. Sometimes I feel Venezuela won´t ever get rid of this phantom. I am not exaggerating, really. I wish I were somewhere else, now more than ever. It all seems a very bad Stephen King novel interlaced with a lousily written local telenovela.

The electoral campaign has begun, inofficially, with Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate, calling Nicolas Maduro a plain liar and explaining why, and Maduro replying with the word faggot. Yes, you´ve read it correctly. For the umpteenth time the chavist side has called Capriles a faggot, a "maricon". Embellishing this insult are califications like rich-born kid, rotten aristocrat and so on. It´s clear that Maduro, who walks around puffed-up in his presidential mode, has no real arguments to throw at Capriles´ face. So he hides behind Chavez´ hallowed image, hoping that Venezuelan voters will vote for him in the assumption that they vote for Chavez, as they have done so for years. In this country, marked by a belief in the supernatural, an army of Virgins all competing with each others, and even more saints and pseudovirgins of the Catholic stables posing as African deities, selling the idea of voting for a dead candidate who is not dead really, is not as hare-brained as you might think.

Accompanying this folkloristic performance is a grimmer factor. Capriles seems to have avoided an attempt on his life day before yesterday, when he was expected to inscribe his candidature at the National Electoral Council (CNE). He didn´t show up, letting the inscription be done by one of the heads of his campaign. This was greeted by a jeering cannonade of insults by the chavist side, of course. But investigations are underway, and the proofs shown are serious enough to conclude that the fear for Henrique Capriles´ life is justified. Maduro´s call that everyone should get a gun to "defend the Revolution" could be taken too literally by the army of hotheads that made Chavez´s presidency possible.

The King Is Dead - Long Live The King????

I have waited on purpose for a week before writing here. So many things have been happening here in Venezuela, as you might know, that I decided to wait these days to let the dust settle down and then see what is really happening here.

The death of Hugo Chavez - an event that has announced itself for more than a month before it came out on March 5 - has eclipsed all news events, even that of the papal reelection. I have been an eye witness to the mass grieving, mass hysteria grabbing hold of a great portion of the Venezuelan people. The grieving is genuine, I can assure you. The void left by Hugo Chavez is so enormous - he has willy-nilly changed the country since 1999 - that virtually no one has the foot size to fill his enormous boots. Not even Nicolas Maduro, dubbed Mr. Potato Head, whose appearances have been till now nothing more than a bleak carbon copy of those of El Comandante, and nothing more than that. His fanaticism is borderless however, as well as his friendship with the Castro-communist gerontocracy on the island of Cuba. That will give him at least a period of strength, given to him by a desperate Raul Castro who knows perfectly well that Venezuela's free oil accounts for 60% of the yearly revenues of the broke island's state.

Still, Mr. Maduro, as the anointed successor to Hugo Chavez, appears like a boy putting on his dad's shoes. His desperate attempts at emulating Hugo Chavez have till now harvested some success as well as ridicule, even from chavists. Venezuelan chavism - its hardcore is at least 40% of the population - is in genuine grief, looking up to Hugo Chavez as a divinity and finding some comfort in having Maduro as a stand-in for him. But the country's economy is running steerless. The shortages of even basic goods, car spare parts etc. are caused by a chronic cash shortage of the Venezuelan government. The attempts at introducing a Marxist economic structure in Venezuela since 2007 have caused havoc and virtually destroyed the national production. In 2012, 97% of the country's yearly revenue was based on oil, while at the time of Chavez' rise in 1999 it hovered around 60%. The country, which produced its own dairy products till 2007, now is totally dependent on milk and cheese importations from Argentina, Uruguay and other countries. Marxist-inspired expropiations and nationalisations have done nothing but destroy Venezuela's non-oil production. The national currency, the bolivar, is worth nothing outside of the country, and quickly losing its value in Venezuela. The day Venezuela isn't able to import anymore with its petrodollars in order to finance its misiones and fill up empty shelves, is the day everything here will experience a melt-down. That day won't come soon, but it depicts in a clear way how deteriorated this country has become under chavist rule, and how we all live and bounce on an oil bubble which, theoretically, could one day burst and throw the whole nation into an abyss.

Despite Hugo Chavez's undoubted achievements on the social and macropolitical fields - he has redefined Latin America's position against the rest of the world, for instance, and introduced social policies in a region oblivious to its army of poors - his ultimate legacy for Venezuela has been a total failure. The country is split in two almost equal parts. The economy is a shambles, the criminality has never been that higher ever in its history, society is merged in a deep crisis. And he has been too late in building up a good continuity of his regime. Nicolas Maduro, or whoever will be put in his place by a restless military (who clearly is controlling the country's course now), will be able to stir up chavist sentiments for a time. But when the people realize that the man / woman in the red shirt imitating El Comandante is NOT Chavez, and has only hollow recycled phrases to sell to them amidst chaos and a mounting anarchy, what will happen then?

As things go, and historical events flow, the chavist movement without its charismatic founder and leader, will soon split up like peronism in Argentinia, into radical and less radical factions. It's too early yet to tell what will happen in Venezuela in the coming months. One thing is sure however. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has a very slim chance of winning the April 14 presidential elections against Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has made a very clever use of Hugo Chavez' death, the country's grieving and the ironclad control of the regime on all national institutes, including the Supreme Court. Thanks to that, Maduro has achieved to push through his grab for power in a pseudo-legal way. His investiture as "interim president" and his simultaneous candidature for president have broken constitutional and electoral law, but protests were in vain. The Supreme Court, a true kangaroo court, approved all of this.

So, it is expected Maduro will win the presidency on April 14. But as I pointed out before, what will happen when the country will start looking past the Chavez mask and see who Maduro really is? I personally don't think Maduro is able to master the power machinery left behind by Chavez. He has no economic background, no original ideas other than that of a syndicalist leader he once was. Will he be able to survive the transitional period? One never knows how the cookie crumbles. But if Nicolas Maduro wants to survive as president and new leader of the chavist movement, he will have to change, and quickly.

While Chavez, despite his bully acting, really knew when to play soft tunes to his adversaries and when not, Maduro has no clue what that means. His attitude towards the opposition has been sheer agressive and abusive. Other than looking for reconciliation and national peace, his boorish behaviour has only deepened the gap between chavists and opposition, and maybe even between chavists themselves. Although they know Maduro is Chavez' appointed successor, he lacks the charisma and the popularity among that group. He will have to change his acting and his image quickly. Otherwise, I see a new period of chaos for Venezuela after April 14. As if Venezuela isn't living in enough chaos already.

Waiting for Hugo Godot

Another weekend came and went, and still there is no real news about Hugo Chavez. Nothing. The only information the world gets, is through VP Nicolas Maduro and his team, who in a series of contradictory messages paint an image of Hugo Chavez as the president who is both present and absent. Jokes are going around about the enigmatic president - one that he is the true Santa: no one sees him but everyone has to believe in him. Needless to say at this point, the government hasn't done anything to dispel rumors about the true condition of Hugo Chavez. If anything, the contradictory reports from within the government itself have only fanned them to new heights. But attention of the Venezuelans is gradually turning to their everyday problems such as the devaluation, the scarcity of products, and above all the rampant criminality. Even the opposition media are paying less and less attention to what is happening politically. Everybody is getting tired of this hide-and-seek game, even the chavists.

But the social networks, specially Twitter, are fuming with wildest rumors, truths, half-truths and downright lies. There was one rumor, last Friday just after I closed my blog, that there was a quarrel between VP Maduro and the defense minister admiral Molero, in which Maduro supposedly wanted to sack Molero for insubordination and Molero replied that the only one to sack him is Chavez personally, and no one else. Nobody has confirmed this news / rumor, but I personally don't discard it. The army have been very silent these last days, their political conman Diosdado Cabello has kept his mouth shut as well while Maduro and his civil neocommunist club have been endlessly blabbing and contradicting each other. It is advisable to watch how the armed forces, this dark horse, the source of power and coup d'etats, will behave the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, on the economic front things are going from bad to worse. Something is not going right with the importations. There are signs that the chavist government is strapped of cash with the barrel of oil at around 100 bucks (???). That could explain in great part the puzzling shortage of even sugar! This country exported sugar! Now it seems most of the white sweet stuff is coming from capitalist Brazil. The government is doing everything to contradict this even with the use of plain lies. According to this socialist government, there is no shortage. "Hamstering agents" of the "ultraright fascist groups" under orders of the "foreign imperialists" are supposedly sabotaging the blooming socialist economy, planted by the "endless wisdom of Chairman Mao, sorry Comandante Chavez" blablabla. The same endless communist blabber which I heard in the seventies and eighties. Anyone suffering of so-called "Ostalgia", or nostalgia for Soviet times, should come here. For me, it's like riding a time machine over and over again. With of course knowing that this movie, called Socialist Venezuela, will end in total and utter failure.

But back to the news. The expected devaluation is now 3 weeks old, but independent economic analysts are already stating that Venezuela will suffer a second devaluation. If that is true, and I think it is, the devaluation will take place after the July elections, putting the country under a very tough situation till that month, when it probably will get worse. To erase all doubts: the economic decline in Venezuela started right after Chavez started the conversion to a marxist economic structure in January 2007, after his second reelection. It has virtually devastated the country's non-oil production, making the country even more dependent (over 90%) on its oil revenues. Despite heavy warnings from all side, the Chavez team is bent on keeping and even radicalizing its marxist course, thinking maybe that the oil revenues will wash away all mistakes. But to me and countless others living this downward hill ride with horror and amazement, things in Venezuela will get worse, much worse. This neocommunist Jurassic Park will throw Venezuela to the level of Castrist Cuba.

Unless people open their eyes. This however is a wish, not a statement built on facts. Venezuelans are still much too cozy in their semi fantasy world, fueled by the world's cheapest gasoline, to really understand what is coming to them. And the poor? Always been poor and ignorant, always will be. To them, Hugo Chavez will remain a redeemer for the time to come, even as this regime is starting to crumble away under the crushing weight of its own ineptitude.

Back again! Reloaded!!!!

Well, it's been a very long time. Living in this godforsaken city - it will be 7 years coming July - has impeded me in keeping true to this blog. But I have made a solemn promise to myself to be a Good And Faithful Blogger.
At this very moment, I am sitting in the middle of the Venezuelan post-Chavez vortex, about 20 minutes driving from the military hospital where he is SUPPOSED to be convalescing after having SUPPOSEDLY been flown back from Havanna, Cuba last Monday.
It's now Friday on the calendar and we have seen "dick" of Chavez, nothing, not even a blurry picture. The smiling and happy-happy pictures of Chavez and his daughters, SUPPOSEDLY taken last February 14, are most probably Photoshop fakes, as countless Venezuelan Twittees have posted their own version of the picture with Chavez reading Playboy, an opposition newspaper, you name it. I have downloaded some very funny ones, one very crafty one of Hitler reading a Venezuelan newspaper of that very day. Photoshop is Magic. That was for sure. But what is happening with Chavez? Where is he? Is he still alive?
Despite Peace Noble prize winner Rigoberta Menchu and hordes of red-clad wellwishers screaming and assuring each and everyone that Chavez will be on his feet in no time, helped by astral forces and whatever, the rational look at Chavez' chances of ever reappearing, is bleak, to say the least. I personally sense that the regime of Vicepresident Maduro, which is doing everything to crush and intimidate dissenters and the opposition, is desperate to hold power no matter what the cost. A NO to Venezuela's plea for more credits from Big Buddy China has made things worse, leading the straggling economy to a dark abyss with a devaluation of almost 50% - the third in three years in a row - , rising prices, food shortages, rampant criminality and whatever else it takes to ruin my days in this country.
If Chavez is dead, or not fit anymore to hold the presidency he was reelected to last fall, then reelections are mandatory according to the country's constitution. The mentioning of this by MP's of the opposition have resulted in enormous regime yelling and screaming, threats and some of those opposition politicians being accused of corruption and persecuted juridically by the government-controlled justice apparatus. Forget any impartiality from the government's side. It's a Cuban-styled Soviet era totalitarian regime with trotskyist mannerisms. And the Chavez-wannabe VP Nicolas Maduro has made this clear to everyone caring to listen and understand. Under Chavez, this regime made its utmost efforts to show a democratic face to the world. Maduro and the cronies of his regime have no problems in tearing that mask from their totalitarian faces. Efforts are made to exclude the only independent TV channel Globovision from the new digital TV system, shutting the last critical mediatic voice down and submitting the rest to follow the regime's ideological line.
The last deed of the Maduro regime has now been to deny a former police inspector, accused of killing scores of demonstrators in 2002 in a kangaroo court with forged evidence, a more humane treatment, while medical reports clearly state that the prisoner's health is failing. The denial by a government-controlled judge will probably seal this man's fate.
Venezuela is a broke country, with all its oil richness. The country is rife with anarchy at the moment. The regime does everything now to prepare the credulous part of the Venezuelan population for what the rest already knows. But God only knows what the effect will be on a country that is feeling more like a shaken champagne bottle ready to burst.
Keep in touch, also via Twitter: @avginkel.