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.