Nicolás Maduro continues with the mission of consolidating the political-economic system of Hugo Chávez, which destroyed the 40 years of “bourgeois democracy” (1959-1998). To comply with this, the heir to the eternal commander has established a kleptocratic tyranny linked not only to the authoritarian regimes of Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Belarus, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates; but with the Colombian terrorist groups of the National Liberation Army and the FARC dissidents. And that also has the support of the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group.
These regimes are willing to pay the price of becoming failed states, accepting economic collapse, isolation and abject poverty if that is what it takes to maintain power. They don’t mind being an outcast in the democratic world.
However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the inefficiencies of its kleptocratic tyranny.
For a decade, these authoritarian regimes have challenged democracies, showing that they are increasingly inefficient, ungovernable. To the point that they had lost confidence in themselves. To the point that Russia and China created the narrative (misinformation on social networks) that the chaotic democratic systems were a force that had been exhausted.
For now, the war in Ukraine has allowed us to dream of a “new birth of freedom”, reviving the spirit of 1989. It has been a military and economic debacle for the Kremlin. He has revealed that “Putin’s Russia is fundamentally based on oil, lies and corruption [oligarcas]and that is not a system that can withstand it,” wrote Thomas Friedman in New York Times.
Likewise, the kleptocratic tyranny of Maduro depends on activities such as drug trafficking, the illegal sale of oil and gold, disinformation (the lie) and corruption. Consequently, it is a system that cannot last much longer without the lack of legal foreign exchange earnings. US sanctions and the freezing of Venezuelan funds from money laundering in Russian banks have Chavez’s successor up against the wall. Without resources it is impossible to stay in power.
Faced with this situation, the Madurista regime reaffirms ties with the dictatorships of Cuba and Russia.
In Havana last week, the chancellor of Cuba met with the representatives of Maduro, the president of the National Assembly and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to ratify the island’s support for the “Bolivarian and Chavista revolution.” Similarly, in Caracas, the deputy minister for Europe, Daniela Rodriguezheld a meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Melik, with the aim of strengthening bilateral cooperation ties and mutual support in the multilateral arena.
The impact that the invasion of Ukraine has had throughout the world led Maduro to affirm that “the sanctions of the United States and the European Union against Russia generate a boomerang effect” against the economy of the old continent, of Washington and the other countries. To face this situation -in a rush forward-, he says that he is preparing a “Protection Plan for the people of Venezuela”, which consists of increasing food production. He insists on selling a fantasy world in which he only needs to decree it, but reality – not the Duke or the stateless opposition – denies him: the numbers do not give him.
My friend David Moran strips him bare in a tweet. “In 2012, Venezuela’s GDP was 352 billion dollars (assume a weight of 100 kilograms). In 2021 the GDP was 46.5 billion dollars (13 kilograms). The IMF estimates that the GDP of 2022 will be 1.5% higher than that of 2021 (13.4 kilograms). UCAB estimates the increase in GDP at 8.6% (14 kilograms) and Credit Suisse at 20% (16.6 kilograms). It is a country or a decimated population”.
With this reality, the vast majority of Venezuelans do not have enough income to cover the basic food basket ―a set of basic foods necessary to ensure the nutrition of a family group of 5.2 members, made up of 8 subclasses of food: meat and their preparations, fish and shellfish, cereals and their products, roots and tubers, milk, cheeses and eggs, fats and oils, fruits and vegetables―. In addition, neither the acquisition of food nor the nutritional status of Venezuelans have improved with the programs and laws enacted by the Chávez and Maduro regimes in the last 20 years.
The kleptocratic tyrannies of Russia and Venezuela are systems that isolate themselves from reality – in their environment they are afraid to tell the truth – so they often drive blindly more than they think. And even when the truth leaks out it hits them in the face so hard it cannot be ignored, making it difficult for Putin and Maduro to change course because their claims to be presidents for life are based on infallibility.
The answer of Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, on whether the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine should become independent states is a good example of these dictatorial regimes.
Naryshkin thought that the ruler wanted to be told that the two territories should be annexed to Russian territory. So when he started to stutter with the wrong answer, Putin, without a hint of irony, told him twice to “speak directly”, as if that were possible in that country. Only after Naryshkin told the former KGB agent the lie he wanted to hear did he blurt out, “You can sit down now.”
In conclusion, Maduro’s reason for being is the same as that of Putin, Xi Jinping, Alexander Lukashenko, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Viktor Orbán, Daniel Ortega, Miguel Diaz-Canel, Kim Jong-un: to be presidents for life. of their respective countries.
An enemy to restore democracy in Venezuela.
