Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The end is near

And it cannot be otherwise.

My grocery bill went in one month from 6 million to 14 million bolivares. My pay check only up 50%. I can eat because I am selling Euros on the black market.

There is that treatment for the S.O.  Last week it was 22 million. Friday I had to pay 30.  His insurance is already dead, maxed out.  I am selling euros to keep him alive. I have some but they are dwindling.

Over all I am not complaining, I am in the few that still maintain a decent standard of living.

And Maduro will cruise to victory.  But his end is near too.

I was made privy of this true story for which I must hide names. Important pharmaceutical group A sold supplies for several months to Venezuela for illness B, directly to the government health ministry.  Yet within weeks of the arrival of that medicine the CEO of A notes that the press keeps reporting shortages and what not. That people are near death. So A calls the health ministry to inquire whether they need more, whether they made a mistake in their estimates. They were told to shut up and not speak about it or else.

Translation: the regime appropriated the medicine and is doing with it what it should not be doing. Saving it only for its supporters? Sending it to Cuba? Bluntly reselling it?

And this is all what the Maduro campaign is all about. A few more weeks to loot whatever can be still looted.

Anarchy is in the country side. Crops, cattle are simply stolen by hordes of thieves who claim to be hungry, but in fact they are looting to resell. Producers have even stopped asking for protection to the army or the police as they discovered that these ones actually organize the looting in exchange of their share. Now workers organize themselves to defend the boss because they know that if they do not do that they will lose their lone source of income in whatever village they are living.  I can vouch for many of those similar stories where even irrigation tubes are stolen with the nails fixing them on the ground.

At the end I have my latest Instagram on the amount of trash you see in Caracas streets and how people keep scavenging in garbage. Caracas is anarchy.

Paradoxically stores are fuller these days: people cannot afford. Saturday I looked at the price of honey for my home made yogur since I cannot afford anymore the one for sale. I put the bottle back, too expensive for me, way too expensive. There was a full shelf of honey, but there was no rice. Priorities.

Meanwhile Maduro has plastered the country with his billboards, half of them with Chavez picture.


All empty promises, pretending that he needs a massive victory so he will be able finally to take the economic measures that need to be taken. There is no self awareness, even by mistake, that he has been in office for 5 years already.  The TV ads break with any abuse we may have ever seen during Chavez years.  Daily the regime reminds the people that if Maduro loses they will lose everything. Also induced that at any rate, for all practical purposes, they will know who did not vote for Maduro. The "bring in the vote" machinery has reached new heights as public employees are asked to submit lists of al the relatives that they will bring to vote next Sunday and that the list will be checked afterwards. Friday the army chief of staff made the least institutional speech ever made by any of his predecessors, demanding people to vote, etc, etc, to save the fatherland. The only two words missing was "for Maduro".

There is no doubt that Maduro will win. Never I thought that I would see an election so blatantly manipulated. Even without cheating, which he will do, the blackmail is terrifying enough to bring in 4/5 million scared voters. The opposition is apparently more divided than ever but look closer than it would seem. Anyone that has a real political career inside the opposition will not go to vote. And there is Henri Falcon who claims to be the opposition candidate since no one else wanted to run. But he has failed to attract any heavy wight, only has-been, agonizing political parties, and crumbs of the sort. But he has the chutzpah to already announce who are the members of his cabinet even though he would not be sworn in before January 2019 were him to win. One wonders if he does that to make sure he loses the election.  There is no other explanation that makes sense, he wants Maduro to win but he is serving an obscurer purpose. He has reneged his promise to drop out of the race if electoral conditions are not met.

And yet, May 21 the real problems will start for Maduro. "reelected" in a sham that is so crazily obvious that lot of countries will not recognize him. That he has not taken a single realistic economic measure because he focused on the campaign and did not want any troublesome additional grumbling will only make the coming change even more painful than what we live already. It will be too late to bring in seeds for the new crops. Not that they could plant much considering the insecurity in the country side. And thus next year we will need to import yet more food. And yet we will have less money.

PDVSA, that state oil giant is not only a zombie but it has lost major arbitration, and more to come. This week Conoco has been seizing legally PDVSA assets in the Caribbean that could impair as much as a quarter of Venezuela's oil exports. Not that it matters much as production keeps falling at an alarming rate.  Maduro's latest moves arresting without reason, just as a political stunt, executives of Chevron and Banesco will make sure that even Russia will think it twice before lending any fresh cash.  And more.

On May 21 Maduro will be reelected without any legitimate support to take the measures that need to be taken. "el pueblo" will have been forced to vote for him and will not take to the streets to defend him when the open revolt comes. The opposition, purged of all its scabs that will go down in flame next Sunday will reunite with possibly new leadership silently under work now, I am certain.

Unless the army decides to go for the blood bath, Maduro days are numbered. And even a narco corrupt army has its limits.






9 comments:

  1. Stay safe Daniel, all good thoughts to your SO.....pleased you have funds to limp through this catastrophe, for awhile anyway. The video of the desperate screamed the virtual collapse of the economy, and soon the society ?
    The election could well be the catalyst, maybe just because it was held, or the results, or or or......from some quarter, change...if things can't go on, they won't...." and it cannot be otherwise ".

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hear from Havana that Raúl Castro decided to put Henri Falcón as "president" and retire Maduro. Falcón will be asked to swear allegiance to the Constituyente, therefore it seems the Cubans may be trying to work a move to avoid Lima group sanctions, and put Jorge Rodriguez in charge of an interim regime until Delci finishes copying the constitution the Cubans are writing for her. Hopefully the Lima group is aware of this possibility?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:21 PM

      I think that giving the election to Falcon is not out of the question, if he is ready to play ball (which he would). They are not surrendering power, that is clear.

      Delete
  3. That video speaks volume on how bleak the situation has become in Venezuela.

    Chavez and Co---and I say "Chavez & Co" because he started this mess, have inflicted a lot of pain and suffering in less than a generation. History will not be kind to this bunch.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Video tells all! So sad. There is no shame with Maduro...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Let's be clear this mess isn't Chavez or Maduro they are just pawns in a grander plan. Let's also be clear the end game will see the people behind this getting ongoing rich. At some point they will stabilize with bare minus like Cuba while pretending the economic war is all going. That way the people stay as pawns just surviving for the next ration. Oil will be developed as with drug trade but the wealth will go to the people behind this. Who knows if Falcon is the next pawn or not. The best the people can do at this point is stop resisting and fall in line such that security, and minimal needs can be offered up Cuban style. The people have lost because most all the opposition either only cared for it self or were out right working for the regime. The only way this gets fixed beyond what Cuba has is if and only if the USA desires the oil and the people in control of the USA are not in on the racket. Some big ifs. But the slide into hell will continue until all resistance is broken and the people become sub servant and in resistant.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 2 quick points: It's not just Maduro this, Maduro that. It's an entire Chavistoide army of thieves that runs the show. Even in Cuba. There are 1300 "Generals", plus hundreds of "revolutionary" top-thugs in power. Not just Cabello, Tarek, Padrino, Rodriguez.. Many, many more run Kleptozuela.Maduro is just a part of that huge kleptomaniac narco machine. Plus the "pueblo-people" itself, by the millions, are often complicit. Millions are on the machine's direct payroll. Millions steal in the fields are the streets, as Daniel says. It's a monster of countless heads, plus the complicit, corrupt "pueblo"..

    Also, no one talk about Smartmatic anymore. While Rodriguez, Delcy and Tibibitch stay silent.. They run those machines. It's much easier to fabricate votes than anyone thinks. Did we forget that even Smartmatic itself declared "at least" 1 million fraudulent votes on their own machines and pulled out of Kleptozuela?
    -------------------------------------------------

    Superb account on this comprehensive post. Chapeau Daniel. Best of luck to you and the few good ones left in that hellhole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another reason why it's not just "Maduro".. It's also PDVSA and Cuba, plus thousands more calling the shots.

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-imports-exclusive/exclusive-as-venezuelans-suffer-maduro-buys-foreign-oil-to-subsidize-cuba-idUSKCN1IG1TO

      Delete
  7. And after the mega-fraud? I still haven't ruled out an US led, brief military intervention. Street Protests? They will be crushed, worse than last year, worse than Nicaragua, but easily crushed. Kleptozuelan military revolt? They're all corrupt and complicit, from the Top to the middle levels. Thousands of them: totally corrupt.

    So unless Pompeo/Trump/Macri/Duque/Peru's 12/Macron and the EU, Canada, and others decide to interve, briefly, militarily, Klepto-Cubazuela will be there to stay, for many more decades to come.

    ReplyDelete

Comments policy:

1) Comments are moderated after the sixth day of publication. It may take up to a day or two for your note to appear then.

2) Your post will appear if you follow the basic polite rules of discourse. I will be ruthless in erasing, as well as those who replied to any off rule comment.


Followers