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Collapsing Socialist Regime in Venezuela Escalates Crackdown
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On February 19, 2015 @ 11:41 pm In The Point | 4 Comments
The usual pattern is that as a totalitarian regime becomes more unstable, it also becomes more totalitarian in an attempt to retain control. Maduro’s collapsing regime in Venezuela is certainly fitting itself to that pattern.
The mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, was detained by federal officials on Thursday, opposition leaders said. Reports of the detention set off protests in some parts of Caracas, the capital; some people banged pots and others honked car horns.
Héctor Urgelles, a spokesman for Mr. Ledezma’s party, the Fearless People’s Alliance, said that dozens of masked men raided Mr. Ledezma’s office and carried him away without identifying themselves or showing a warrant for his arrest. Mr. Ledezma was elected in 2008, but the governing party subsequently transferred nearly all of his powers, including control of the police and schools, to a newly created government entity.
“They took him by force, they hit him, once again violating human rights,” Helen Fernandez, general director of the office of metropolitan municipality of Caracas, told VIVOplay.
Ruling Socialist Party officials in recent days accused Ledezma of plotting a coup.
The official propaganda outlets are putting out claims of a coup involving the entire opposition. The opposition these days has no remote ability to pull off a coup in the literal sense. They may be getting to the point though where popular protests will do.
And that’s what the Maduro regime is really afraid of. Too many Chavez loyalists have deserted the government. The low price of oil and the managed economy have imploded badly.
The Socialists could legally transfer power instead of conducting their elections at gunpoint. But instead they’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by promoting paranoia, using brutality and beginning the process of eliminating the entire legal opposition.
Maduro, mentally unstable, has flirted with claims of a conspiracy before. The claims have been the usual insane stuff, a CIA plot to kill the opposition and blame him. The sort of thing you expect from a dictator who sees his predecessor appearing to him in bird form. But this looks like the beginning of a comprehensive crackdown as his regime fights to stay in power.
Which means the real ugliness is just beginning.
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