WaPo: Nicolas Maduro shoves aside democracy in Venezuela

From the Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

Nicolas Maduro shoves aside democracy in Venezuela

THE ATTEMPT by the followers of Hugo Chavez to install a successor to the dead caudillo through a one-sided election is faltering. Now the Venezuelan regime appears to be preparing to maintain itself in power through brute force — and the oil-producing country is headed for a crisis that demands the attention of the United States and Latin America’s democracies.

On Tuesday, Nicolas Maduro, the former bus driver and Cuban protege who was designated as Mr. Chavez’s successor, went on national television to announce that he would “not permit” a march Wednesday called by the opposition to support its call for a recount of votes in Sunday’s election. Promising to use “a strong hand” — a hoary phrase from Latin America’s history of dictatorship — Mr. Maduro spoke of protesters “filling [Caracas] with death and blood,” words that rang like a threat. The government said that seven people already had been killed in post-election clashes and claimed that a coup was being prepared.

In fact, if anyone is preparing a coup, it is Mr. Maduro and his Cuban advisers. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski has put forward a peaceful and reasonable demand: that an audit be undertaken of the suspect presidential vote count. Mr. Maduro himself said Sunday that he would agree to a recount — but on Monday the electoral commission he controls abruptly ratified a result that gave him a margin of 260,000 votes out of 14.8?million cast. The narrow outcome clearly shocked the Chavistas, who had already installed Mr. Maduro in the presidency by unconstitutional means; they expected that their domination of the media and orchestration of voting by state employees would produce an easy “victory” and legitimize the regime’s continuation.

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4 thoughts on “WaPo: Nicolas Maduro shoves aside democracy in Venezuela”

  1. I always suspected Inmaduro would be worse than Chavez – mostly due to his being even stupider…but wait…is that even possible!?!?!?!????

  2. When someone winds up in a position way beyond his capacity, it is all too typical for the person to try way too hard to compensate for his unsuitability. It never works, because you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but the attempt can get very nasty and, in Maduro’s case, violent and even deadly. The guy is hopeless, not because he was a bus driver but because his rise has had little or nothing to do with real merit and everything to do with politics. Just one look at him suffices to figure out he’s out of his depth–and huffing, puffing and spouting socialist claptrap can’t hide that. No doubt he can make a good puppet, but he’s not “charismatic” like Chávez (who, like Fidel, was totally full of it but knew how to put on a show, at least for a certain audience). This will not end well.

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