Du côté de chez Dieudonné

XXI century Animal Farm

I have started to read "À la recherche du temps perdu" a labor that probably will consume the rest of my life. But worthy, as I think it will give many a post title idea. For this first inspiration I though that if one would ever want to write an anti-Proustian opus, one where vulgarity and low instincts would reign supreme, Bolivarian Venezuela would offer a mine of ideas for characters and plots. And Diosdado Cabello could easily be the main character. Or at least a Baron de Charlus that went really, really bad. Some would say that the pigs at Animal Farm would be a better literary allusion when talking about Diosdado Cabello, a case strongly made through some telling pictures. Let the reader chose the version.

The point is that Diosdado Cabello made major headlines this week. It seems that the regime has reached such a degree of totalitarian corruption that people are simply outright deserting and asking witness protection programs. After all, when you deal with drug dealing mafias, this is the least you should demand. Which is what a certain Leamsy Salazar decided to do with a few folks. See, after having been one of the top security for Chavez, he was asked by Cabello to work for him once the demi God returned to the bolivarian Olympus. Apparently Leamsy did not like his fall from Elysium to Hades and is currently rattling about Cabello at the DEA.


I really do not care whether Cabello is actually the head of a major drug cartel. I am not even bothering to put a link to describe the adventures of Leamsy and Diosdado. The only link is to a collection of posts that I have written with or about Cabello over the years. See, there are enough acts of delinquency committed by the man to make him deserve a place in jail for the rest of his days, if there were an independent judiciary in Venezuela. Noting along the way that his behavior is strangely close to what the behavior of a drug capo would be. But I digress again. For memory follows a list of some of his crimes:

• His tenure as governor of Miranda was highly contested {corruption}. When Capriles became governor he promptly made a huge dossier with all the irregularities of Cabello at the state house. But Cabello's control of the judiciary made this come to naught.
• As the president of the National Assembly he has behaved like a thug, from expelling representatives on a whim to having them beaten up in public.
• His nepotism is well known, from putting his brother at the helm of tax collecting SENIAT to his wife as a representative and what not.
• Misuse of public funds to host his own TV show where he insults anyone he wants to insult without accounting for these accusations, and even less granting any reply time. 
• This last one has not stopped him from abusing his power to silence critics, going to the point of forcing Tal Cual to close while its director Petkof must report weekly to a judge even if he did not write a certain article, and may not have been aware of it until after publication. His viciousness against a sick Petkof to force him to go to the judge weekly underlines quite well his viciousness on the way he treats his adversaries, political or not.

I stop there because you can see by yourself that there is enough material to sue Diosdado today, enough to put him behind bars for the rest of his life, no matter what Leamsy has to say. The problem for Diosdado is that Leamsy is speaking in a country where there is justice and where Cabello has operated against the law of that country.

What is more interesting here is what will happen if indeed the DEA office pushes through an indictment against Cabello. Even if that never happens, the point is that Cabello is now a wounded option for chavismo. With the possible demise of Cabello we also have the demise of a whole sector of the army that could be tempted to make a coup against Maduro, or against an opposition electoral victory.

In short, a weakened/indicted  Cabello is opening wide the chavismo can of worms, or a red Pandora box since we are into literary allusions today.

The problem here is that a cornered Cabello is more dangerous than ever as he may decide to bring down with him a few were he to go down. Or make a coup.

Whatever it is, the thriller next weeks is to watch for whom he is going to bring down along.