VenEconomy: Will 'Emperor' Maduro get New Clothes after All? From the Editors of VenEconomy Latin American Herald Tribune February 20, 2015
With a growing loss of popular support, and without having being able to tackle the drought of foreign currency, a situation that has Venezuela in ruins and its population hungry; and with growing discredit at international level, the government of Nicolás Maduro and the military elite supporting it appear to have decided to move forward at whatever cost, completely removing the democratic mask without caring about the ways to get the democratic leaders openly opposing them out of the way once and for all.
This way, while Venezuela is being devastated at political, economic and social level by the country's communist Bolivarian regime sponsored by the Castro brothers of Cuba, Hugo Chávez and Maduro; while the country has started showing cracks and the population is being decimated by violent criminals, the government of Maduro has returned playing its favorite dictatorial games and gave a demonstration of its brute force with a commando-style operation in Caracas on Thursday.
Antonio Ledezma, the Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas and an authority of the regional Executive Branch who was elected with the highest number of votes, was taken forcibly by members of Venezuela's political police SEBIN, who broke into his office without an arrest or search warrant, allegedly following the instructions of the Attorney General's Office, as explained by Maduro on a national TV and radio broadcast. Ledezma is being accused of alleged crimes against homeland security, supposedly evidenced in a statement that called Venezuelans for a peaceful political transition in the framework of the Constitution, jointly signed by other opposition leaders such as Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado (the latter was illegally removed from her parliamentary seat last year.)
At the same time, and just like every despot acting behind the backs of the people, Maduro took over the public airwaves to make a series of confusing announcements: 1) The Prosecutor's Office had issued an arrest warrant against Ledezma, who would be applied the full force of the law for conspiring against his legitimate Government. 2) Feasible early parliamentary elections with the intention to catch the opposition unaware. 3) An unexpected and unannounced trip he made to Cuba on Tuesday to meet with the Castro brothers. 4) A series of threats he launched against Lorenzo Mendoza, the CEO of Venezuela's largest foodmaker Polar, and Henrique Capriles, governor of Miranda state.
This new witch-hunt conducted by the Venezuelan revolution demonstrates the weakness of a government showing cracks everywhere except for one side: the brutal repression against the democratic sector of the population, which casts doubts about who really is in command in Venezuela (perhaps the military sector?)
Julio Borges, Machado, Capriles and other leaders of the democratic opposition also face prison and prosecution threats by the State, government officials familiar with the situation have suggested. This should be added to the latest wave of arrests of military officers who were allegedly planning a coup d'état, the umpteenth attempt denounced over the past year and the brutal repression against the youth daring to protest in the streets, which claimed the lives of two people and dozens of new detainees this week. Plus the unfounded accusations against the government of the United States for interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela.
The smell of fear and despair of a government that finds itself lost due to the evident failure of its "anti-management" is what remains in the air after all this.
We just need to wait and see if the opposition sector emerges from its lethargy and responds with intelligence, proactivity, and true unity in the face of this dictatorial unmasking.
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