The strange adequacy of the president

Venezuela authorities are increasingly struggling with the economic crisis in which they blame the opposition and the "capitalists"

In the capital of Venezuela Karakas, a trial began on one of the most striking opposition leaders and a merciless critic of the ruling regime Leopoldo Lopez , which has been in prison for the organization of anti -government protests since February this year. His supporters rally on the streets again - against the backdrop of the whole deepening economic crisis and the extremely unpopular reforms of the “Chavist” government and President Nicholas Maduro.

The trial of Lopez, the leader of the Popular Volya party and the public movement on Twitter #LASALIDA ("Exit"), as expected, again raised a wave of protests in Venezuela, slightly subsided after mass performances in early 2014 . The most outrage of people by the rule of the "Chavists" then manifested itself in the western states of the country of Tachira and Merid and in the capital, where several people died in clashes with fighters of the "ruling unified socialist party of Venezuela (PSUV) . Lopez was accused of inciting to violence, an attempt by a coup and complicity in the murder and was arrested on February 18, after he himself voluntarily decided to surrender to the authorities. He rejects all the accusations, just like a few more of his associates, who appeared on the dock with him. Near the court of the court where this process takes place, at least a hundred opposition activists are constantly rallying.

- Leopoldo contain in very bad conditions. They put pressure on him, he was isolated from everyone, only his wife and children and his lawyer can rarely see him. And I was able to visit him a couple of times. All books were selected from him, he is not allowed to read newspapers and generally receive any information. He can neither write nor receive letters. We are terribly concerned, and we declare that this is a gross violation of human rights, my brother’s rights, ”the sister of the opposition leader Diana Lopez told reporters on the eve of the court.

Leopoldo Lopez shortly before the arrest

The annual inflation in Venezuela, judging by the official figures published by the Central Bank of this country, and remaining the highest in Latin America, reached a level of 63.4 percent, a record in the last 6 years. In Venezuelan stores it is almost impossible to buy flour, rice, sugar, milk or toilet paper. At the same time, the authorities are convinced that in the plight of the economy it is not bureaucracy at all, the total corruption of officials, the uncontrolled and stupid expenses of the state budget, which is formed mainly due to the export of oil and oil products, or an artificially overstated course of the national currency (despite the official devaluation last year), and supposedly performances of the opposition activists, whose peaks are peak It came for the last winter and spring. This is what, for example, the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro thinks about this:

- These are people who hate their own homeland and their compatriots with a snake hatred. The barricades, specially erected on the streets of cities, prevented the transportation of goods, and the bloody clashes of rebels with the police and the National Guard forced many sellers to close their shops and trading shops. The happiness and well -being of ordinary Venezuelans mean nothing to those who call themselves "dissatisfied." They are ready for any baseness to drown our homeland, these ultra -right villagers!

At the end of August, the Venezuelan government, at the proposal of Nicholas Maduro, was in full force in the “voluntary” resignation, as stated, within the framework of the “Revolution within the Revolution” plan for the sake of increasing the efficiency of state bodies and the fight against corruption. The reorganization of the Cabinet of Ministers has not yet begun, but its leader has already been appointed-this is the 78-year-old Cuban economist Orlando Borrego, who was considered the closest ally of Che Guevara in his youth . One of his first advice was the proposal to Nicholas Maduro to institute criminal proceedings against the former head of the Ministry of Finance and Venezuela's planning in the 90s Ricardo Hausmann , now a teacher of economics at Harvard University, for his recent article who criticizes the “Chaavists” management of the government bond market.

Typical regiments of Venezuelan stores

President Nicholas Maduro, meanwhile, announced that in Venezuela, in all food stores, household goods and other deficiency, special devices will be installed that read the fingerprints of customers, similar to those used during elections in polling stations so that people could not vote twice. Although in August this innovation was conceived as a voluntary experiment to find out whether it is possible to streamline trade in this way and stop the smugglers, now, no later than the end of November of this year, the dactyloscopy of each buyer becomes mandatory.

Prices for all main food and sanitary-hygienic goods, including toilet paper, children's diapers and women's gaskets, shampoos and deodorants, and so on are artificially frozen by the authorities after the so-called "law on fair prices", aimed, as Nicholas Maduro said, to combat "madness of capitalist speculation." A separate “revolutionary” commission has appeared in the government, subsidizing the production of main products and goods that control the prices of them and strictly, using the “people's patrols”, monitoring the compliance with private merchants of the pricing policy he prescribed . The president has repeatedly said that in the future he generally intends to eliminate any free market and entrepreneurship in Venezuela, which, in his opinion, are beneficial only to the bourgeoisie and world imperialism in order to rob the people. In response to criticism, both internal and external, Nicholas Maduro reacts approximately as follows:

Nicholas Maduro at a PSUV rally

- Today I need folk support. I must feel your love and understand that you are sure of my adequacy, which some enemies of our revolution question. Already several publications in Latin America living with the money of the United States, with reference to unknown doctors, wrote that I, Nicholas Maduro, supposedly have problems with the psyche. Do not laugh, please! I understand your reaction, but it's not funny at all! Who doubts my legal capacity here? ( A fragment of one of the recent speeches of Nicholas Maduro in front of PSUV activists in Falcon ).

The result of a policy, when the cost of the production of local goods was even higher than retail prices for them, moreover, a private business for imports from abroad, and multi-kilometer queues in shops on the streets of Venezuelan cities and villages, were also fraught with a lack of currency reserves for imports. Another "side effect" was immediately manifested. As the leadership of the ruling party stated, at least a third of all products and goods subsidized by the state, buyers began to be smuggled for sale to neighboring Colombia, where they are much more expensive, sometimes ten or more times. Venezuelans from the border states (the very ones where the protests erupted at the beginning of the year) sometimes just go to Colombia on their own cars with empty trunk to merge almost all of gasoline from full fuel tanks, leaving only a little on the way back - in Venezuela, one liter of medium -sized fuel costs about 2 US cents.

The inscription on the asphalt in Karakas: "Maduro killer"

However, fuel is illegally taken to Colombia not only in their own tanks, cans and plastic bottles, but also in very organized, whole columns of fuel trucks. In this “business” they directly participate and cover it, local authorities, heads of party committees and law enforcement agencies, says one of the smugglers hiding under the nickname “Kui” , that is, “sea pig”:

-Each police post on the road receives $ 40 dollars from each columbia, which passes towards Colombia. Sometimes you can pay off less, and sometimes they still take their additional “fee”, $ 3.5-4.5 from each centner of “goods”, if we are talking about something valuable, not about simple flour. Both our mayor and the party secretary are all in business. And everyone knows about this, despite regular inspections from Karakas. Inspectors will leave, and we will stay! And again we will carry fuel.

In August, Venezuela unilaterally stated that all checkpoints on the border with Colombia, the total length of which is more than 2 thousand 100 kilometers, will now be closed in the evening and night hours. In addition, along the border, most of which passes through mountain jungle or "llyanos" (inaccessible savannah, dusty or swampy, depending on the season), 17 thousand fighters of the faithful "chavists" of the National Guard were deployed. However, so far no serious results, except for additional tension in the already difficult relations in recent years with Bogota, have not brought Karakas. With the exception of arrests, more than 500 local farmers and citizens accused of smuggling about 2 and a half thousand tons of flour and vegetables and 800 tons of diesel fuel.

Inspection on the border of Venezuela and Colombia

The border areas of the country, along the territories of Colombia, Brazil and Gayan, are, in principle, filled with a wide variety of activity and movement. Those who want to leave Venezuela, not for the sake of smuggling and generally any legitimate or illegal affairs, but simply forever, has become more and more recently. However, it will soon be possible to do this, perhaps, only by a terrestrial or water route-due to a new decision of the “Chavist” government, to oblige all airlines, local and foreign, to sell tickets for flights flying out of the country, only for national currency, a carrier. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) , by the middle of this year, 24 air carriers accumulated a total of 3 billion 600 million revenue carriers, which, due to administrative wires and a simple absence of dollars or euros in the country's banks, is completely impossible to convert to solid currency, even at an official state-owned rate, which today is about 6.3 bolivaries per US dollar.

- What airline to agree to execute flights to, or from a country where it simply does not pay for either labor or the cost of the fuel spent, where the government deliberately breaks off all connections with the global economic system and risks being in the deepest isolation? -emphasizes the press secretary of Iata Jason Sinclair .

Queue in the electrical goods store in Karakas

Most Venezuelan airlines are on the verge of collapse (including due to the lack of currency means for the purchase of spare parts for their aircraft), and the world air transportation leaders - Lufthansa, American Airlines, Iberia, Alitalia, Air Canada have already reduced the number of flights in Venezuela by an average of 50 percent, raising the cost of They several times, some completely excluded these flights from their schedule. For example, the cost of a “there and back” ticket in Miami on a 6-hour flight of American Airlines in an economy class (on the most popular foreign direction in Venezuela) today-about $ 2 thousand, despite the fact that the same flight of Bogota-Mayami will cost no more than $ 700.

In the catastrophic situation in this regard, the national tourist market is also located. Representatives of dozens of bankrupt Venezuelan tour operators organized a rally of protest a month ago before the building of the Ministry of Sports and Tourism in Karakas. Nicholas Maduro, in response, is still branded the "imperialists" for their "economic war" unleashed and threatens to completely expel all foreign companies from the national air transportation market.