From rabipelao courts to public lynching: a day of contradictions in the regime

A regime on overdrive to survive has no qualms exploring interesting ways to reach results and contradict itself as it goes, as often as needed.  If you needed evidence that Maduro is grasping for straws, you get them in the last couple of days.

Let's start with the title.  This morning I was writing that Maduro was proposing/ordering kangaroo courts to send the owners of stores he does not like faster to jail.  But tonight I have to write that he wants now "el pueblo" to take the initiative and seize looters.   There are many problems with this. First Maduro recognizes that the looting problem is big enough to deserve a stronger response when 24 hours ago it was mere isolated incidents.  Second, if rabipelao courts are good enough for Daka's owners why not send looters to the same courts? The answer to these contradictions is that Capriles went on record saying what we already all knew from pictures in twitter: the looters are directed by PSUV operatives. And I add since there is no way to prove it at this point, that this is the way chosen by the regime to pay these operatives in view of the dirty work required from them until mid December.

Todos los focos de saqueos,anarquía,caos,son dirigidos por el psuv para después decir que somos nosotros,alertas!
— Henrique Capriles R. (@hcapriles) November 12, 2013

All flash points of looting, anarchy chaos are directed by the PSUV and then they will blame it on us. Be alert!

Another fascinating contradiction is that after having started the worst wave of looting in Venezuela since 1989, and by far, Maduro today asked people to come and invest in the country.  In a day, by the way, where Venezuelans bond dropped as the international trust in the country is about junk bond status.  Can we assume that Maduro is stupid enough to contradict himself so blatantly so fast?  Well, maybe, but there must be something else too.

As he was saying that, today we also learned that car battery manufacturers were intervened, that stores such as shoe stores were threatened, that looting started to reach small store owners, of the neighborhood quality. What gives? Possibly he wants to convey overseas that the only ones to worry are the Venezuelan businesses who are unreliable and should be replaced by foreign ones.  But even this generous hypothesis from my part rings hollow because Maduro had the chutzpah to ask Venezuelan business people to bring back home the dollars they have stashed overseas, on the week where he mad private business lose millions of dollars that cannot be recovered ever. No, what Maduro was truly announcing was his economic vision, believe it or not: no more private business in Venezuela besides the big ones in association with the regime. I will note that someone commented to me today that the regime is going to have to nationalize now Daka and related because the owners are not going to refurbish the stores or the inventory; that this was a logical step because after having ruined agriculture and manufacturing the last stand of private business was commerce and banking. And banking he does not need to move against because the regime is the main driver of cash through the system and thus banks will not rise against the regime.

And yet there is another major contradiction but of a more subtle nature to understand. Today finally the Nazional Assembly managed to get rid of one of the opposition representatives which through the viciousness of Venezuelan politics will be replaced by a safe pro Maduro vote (though rumor has that he has been extorted though his properties in Monagas to make sure his future votes are the ones wished for; such as the two other opposition votes brought to chavismo though due extortion).  This beyond undemocratic maneuver is to get Maduro the wished for enabling law to deal with corruption and economics.  But does he need it? And this is where the contradiction lays because this week with the looting and the announcement of the kangaroo courts, and that he will limit what a business can make in earnings, Maduro is doing already what he would do with the enabling law. Clearly he does not need it. Or does he?

Let's read two of Leopoldo Lopez tweets today:

El conflicto interno del gobierno no solo es politico. Hay un enfrentamiento entre mafias de poder, narcos con chapa de altos funcionarios.
— Leopoldo López (@leopoldolopez) November 13, 2013

The internal conflict inside the regime is not only political. There is a confrontation between mafias fo power and drug traffickers with high public servant badges.

Quienes son los cadiveros? Publica la lista Maduro. Quienes son los directores d esas empresas? A quien responden en el gobierno?
— Leopoldo López (@leopoldolopez) November 13, 2013

Who are those that who benefited greatly from CADIVI [currency control]? Publish the list Maduro. Who are the directors of these businesses? To whom where they linked inside the regime?

Leopoldo says on twitter what no air-wave media will allow him to say because such is the extent of censorship that the regime has gone out to ask that the word "looting" is not pronounced. And with that he puts his finger on the true pressing concerns of Maduro, concerns that he can only solve with an enabling law that gives him powers to deal with his internal enemies, not the democratic opposition that he is already screwing fine without any extra law, thank you!

To get rid of any opposition muscle it is enough to apply Marxist theories of end to private property. Now the private sector has been so weakened that a reaction like 2002 is not only impossible but the victims of governmental abuse remain silent, will not even publish a bland press communique least the regime damages more than their properties: their families and their lives.  But to get rid of tribal factions inside chavismo.........

These contradictions and actions of some of the regime spokespeople (Cabello is strangely subdued in an occasion where he should be giving a declaration a minute) mean something else: Maduro has allied with the radical wing of chavismo and he is trying to make a legalistic coup against the other factions of chavimso. The coup is not against democracy and the opposition, that one was done in 2010. The coup in progress is one against a chavista group which will imply by force that Venezuela will become a Marxist country where oil revenue makes life somewhat mess miserable than in other Marxist countries like Cuba or North Korea.

Then again the coup may be coming from Maduro's own entourage who is pushing him to make such idiotic decisions so as to get rid of him sooner than later.