Venezuela’s Democratic Facade Crumbles

Moises Naim and Francisco Toro

Hugo Chavez's populist promise has given way to corruption and brutality as the Venezuelan people suffer. Today, Venezuela is the sick man of Latin America, buckling under chronic shortages of everything from food and toilet paper to medicine and freedom, as hungry people vent their despair while the revolutionary elite lives in luxury, pausing now and then to order recruits to fire more tear gas into crowds desperate for food.......Venezuelans have gone to the polls 19 times since 1999, and chavismo has won 17 of those votes. The regime has won by stacking the election authorities with malleable pro-government officials, by enmeshing its supporters in a web of lavishly petro-financed patronage and by intimidating and marginalizing its opponents. It worked for more than a decade — until it didn’t work anymore.

After every election, another little piece of the constitution would be chipped away..... Endless professions of concern for the poor followed furious denunciations of gringo imperialism.
But this, too, was a charade....... professing unconditional love and support for the poor were a ruse to deflect attention from the wholesale looting of the state. In fact, more than $100 billion in oil profits stashed in a “National Development Fund” were simply never accounted for......Read More...