Genocidal class warfare in Venezuela

Last week I took the S.O. to his monthly chemotherapy. We were late by almost two weeks while he was dealing with side effects of the preceding cycle. Thus it had been nearly two months. The place is an ample room with about 15 comfy chaises for patients and an extra chair for accompanying people. Usually it is full and often we had to wait up to an hour for our turn.

What was my surprise to see that only two other chairs were taken and that the S.O. went straight to a chair of his choice!


I asked our regular nurse in a bit of dark humor whether everyone was cured or dead. She told me that there are two reasons for attendance to drop dramatically over the last two months. One, the treatments must keep apace with inflation which means that it is becoming quite a burden for many, even with insurance, as paychecks are not following inflation. But more dramatic, oncologie medicine stocks have been exhausted for many type of cancers, in particular the more common ones like breast cancers. I suppose that in a perverse irony of the Fates my S.O. is lucky to have a rarer cancer... por ahora.

We were told that for those who cannot find medicine there is only two options: suspend treatment in the hope that the regime will keep its promise of finding "generics" which are of dubious quality when triangulated with Cuba as past experience demonstrates; or shell out foreign currency.

So, what does it mean to pay your own way with foreign currency?

Let's look at some simple facts to begin. By law the regime/state has the monopoly of bringing into the country certain type of drugs: HIV, Cancer, Kidney failure, Organ Transplant and some other special cases. The reason was a good one (from the "4th republic" by the way, not Chavez): since those medicines tend to be expensive the state paid for them to allow for equal access. If you were poor you got treated at a public hospital; if you were rich or middle class with health insurance then you could pick up your practitioner and get less traumatic care than what you get as a general rule at Venezuelan public hospitals. Either way, you got treated.

But things went down under Chavez when, first, the regime decided to set up a parallel health care system that ended up in two equally deficient systems. With the crisis coming, an over saturated private system does not have the means, or vocation or the ability to replace the public system.  The more so that the regime refuses to give it access to free convertible dollars to buy medicine and supplies. As it is the case of food and general drugs, treatment and analytical supplies are also dearly missing. And this is made graver for patients who depend on drugs under state monopoly, a monopoly that the state refuses to give up even though it cannot fulfill it.

Thus, if you have access to USD, and want to get your prescriptions from the US (or Colombia or even Mexico) you will need at least one trip to establish contact with a local physician that will write you that prescription (particularly in the US where M.D. are so afraid of malpractice suits that they refuse to write anything without seeing the patient). Be it Bogota or Miami we are talking here 1.000 for a round trip, between 200 and 1.000 on staying expenses depending on whether you have relatives there, plus the medical bill that can easily reach a multiple of 1.000 depending on your ailment. This for your first month; for the rest you may bring a supply for more than one cycle if drug stability is OK, or have someone else pick it up for you upon your local physician notice, or go back to pick the next lot. All of this, of course, if the sick person is able to travel because if it cannot, then...

We are looking here at a bottom line of 2.500 USD a trip. Since the minimal wage in Venezuela is at 11 USD, that trip, for a month supply, represents 227 MONTHLY MINIMUM WAGE. Think about that for a minute.

Clearly, only the super rich can afford treatment today. If you are middle to upper middle class you may be able to pay for a few months and quickly deplete whatever savings you have outside of the country, if you have them. And then, well, join the poor.

The catch here is who are the super rich that have easy access to dollars for themselves or the relatives they chose to help. There are two groups, those that were already rich in USD before Chavez and those that became obscenely rich under Chavez. Many in the group BEFORE are either long gone anyway, or got long ago a US health insurance. Their concern, if any, is for relatives left behind. And those that did not leave the country during Chavez first years do not have an endless supply of US dollars, amen of having actually to earn these while the chavista super rich simply steal the money they need, in dollars, straight.

At this point it is simply inconceivable, it is a crime against Human Rights not to allow free, if targeted, convertibility of currency so that sick people can at the very least avoid the trip part for getting the care they need. The regime is coldly erasing through death or financial failure the historical middle to upper middle class since the only rich folks that can deal with the current situation are the ones close to the regime.

At least in this particular case, at this time, we can use the term "genocidal class warfare". You either die, go bankrupt or leave the country. You have no other option.

Some pro Chavez/regime supporter may point out that it is mere justice that all Venezuelans have to go though this, rich or poor.  After all, the poor do not get either the medicine, nor the health support. I will reply that totalitarian regimes do not care about what happens to their civilians. They are a mere casualty in the war for the just cause. It does not matter for the regime whether its supporters die in greater numbers, they are expendable. What matters in the end is that the opposition to the regime is broken. The end justifies the means. All methods are valid. Period.

Let me remind you historical precedents, such as Hitler not afraid to distract from its army and civilians resources for use in Jewish extermination carried out all the way to the last day of the war. Or how Stalin drive to liquidate Koulaks had no problem creating a general starvation, or how the Castros never lost a night of sleep over the balseros braving the straights of Florida or the Argentina's military sending unprepared soldiers to the Falklands, or....

The current holders of the Venezuelan regime have absolutely no qualms about letting people die of disease, and I mean not only cancer patients. Never mind those who will die soon of malnutrition and those who already die of violence in the barrios. What the regime wants is for denizens of El Cafetal, or Prados, or Altamira to stay terrified at home, looking at what next heirloom they will need to sell at low price to help buy medicine for cousin Juan. That chavista supporters suffer more, die in much greater numbers is really not an issue for Maduro.

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Note: I already wrote in Spanish a note on why there is already enough evidence to instruct a dossier on chavista leadership to send them to the Hague tribunal. I suggest that the National Assembly starts officially the procedure. After all, if Dilma got impeached Sunday I do not see why we should not try to do so with Maduro.

How long can Maduro hold?

The annulation of the Amnesty Law was so predictable that I did not bother with a post. Twitter was enough. However, what is worth a post is a meditation on how long a kleptocracy cum drug trafficking regime can hold it together.

The first thing we must consider is that by now the regime makes no pretense whatsoever. Under Chavez, at least some minimal delay was held, when possible.  Some lengthy presidential cadena "predicted" what a wished for action of other "powers of the state" should happen, and a few days later, voilá! X got to jail, Y was expelled, Z was annulled.  Now progress has been made: Maduro asks for an opinion and within a couple of days the high court, TSJ, serves notice. Unanimously of course.

There is no pretense whatsoever, not even the occasional dissent vote in the bench. You know, they could take turns to say a nay out of 32 justices. Rulings are written even sloppier than they used to be. In fact we even wonder if the court takes the time to read the annulled law. I, for one, think that as soon as a given article is voted at the Assembly, some chavista sends it to the court to prepare the annulment before the final law is even voted. How else could the TSJ beat any speed ruling record observed in any democracy, or even dictatorship for all that I know?

It is not only the TSJ that is blunt about paying no attention to the Assembly or the opposition wishes. The illegal electoral board, CNE, is writing new rules as it goes to stop any electoral initiative from the opposition. That is, the Chavez regime who went from plebiscite to plebiscite is now in the no-election mode. See, Chavez made victory credible (albeit known cheating). Today everyone knows, even chavistas, that neither Maduro nor Cabello could get elected consejo comunal dog catcher.

There are two ways to understand what is going on. Of course, what I repeat all the time, the driving force here is that the regime cannot allow to hand in power to someone else because that would mean that scores of chavistas would soon find their way to jail. Thugs and criminals and narco-traffickers are not known to surrender peacefully to popular will, no matter how lopsided that one is.

Thus the question: is this a show of strength or a show of weakness?

The weakness is easy to demonstrate. The regime has its own polls, even if it refuses to acknowledge the real life poll of December 6 2015. Popular support is fading so fast that open air meetings are rarer, least someone would take a picture of the real attendance (not long until a drone is flown over a chavista real-rally?). Thus the regime is in survival mode, a mode where chutzpah is significantly enhanced along irresponsibility and all sorts of crazy. Yes, the regime is scared, but as in cornered dog scared, biting right and left.

But the show of strength is also easy to understand. This is a regime that is in it for the long run. It is a regime that has made peace with brute force. Already legal and psychological brute force is employed from holding political prisoners to annulling even a weather report voted at the Assembly. Physical force is not as well set yet but the training has been done as we can see from how 2014 protests were repressed, but also now how food riots are repressed these days.

In short, it is a regime that knows it has the weapons and that is the holder of its own truth, a truth of having the financial power to ensure the survival of a small elite which has robbed enough for it. Golden exile is not an option for many of them anymore, but they have stashed enough to pay all the mercenaries they will need to pay to stay in Venezuela and enjoy the riches of life even though the people that placed them into office are starving and dying of unspeakable diseases that normal countries have eradicated. In short, they have become such criminals that they are beyond good and evil, they are amoral, pitiless.

Which brings us to the longevity of such regimes. Considering the continuous degradation of the standard of living, the equilibrium point is when Catia and Petare will get so hungry that they are the ones that will be starting the opposition marches instead of Prados del Este. The date? I do not know, they are not hungry enough yet, not enough of their children have died yet. But the time will come, probably sooner than expected. After all, let's not forget  that no matter how military like Padrino, the defense minister, are associated to the corruption of the regime, when they give the order to shoot to the troop this one may not follow: the troop will know why the people are protesting because, well, it is their parents and brothers, and cousins...

I will remind the patient reader that there are historical precedents where the troop refused to follow generals orders, and that was that. I see no reason for Venezuela to be any different, the more so that the troop did not enjoy the booty that their generals grabbed.

And they shall go to jail

I am not sure if people outside Venezuela truly measure how miserable it is to live here. However one thing is certain, the political situation makes it impossible for things to improve any time soon. Even more certain are the odds of things getting worse. The photo below is National Assembly chair Ramos Allup showing on TV the picture of the defense minister Padrino Lopez in bowed deference to Fidel. This is the clearest sign that the confrontation with the regime is reaching pitch fork level.

Why is this picture, which has widely circulated in the web months ago, back in front?

For this you need to come back to what this blog has gotten tired to repeat over and over: the regime cannot, CANNOT, leave office because this would mean that dozens if not hundreds of regime luminaries will find their way to trials and jail sentences, some as far as reaching The Hague tribunal (it is my opinion that, at the very least, Maduro's criminal actions against the well being of the Venezuelan population make him worthy of sitting at the accused bench of The Hague international court for human rights).

If you do not get this, or disagree with this, then you really have wasted your time reading this blog over the years.

The Games of Thrones played in real life here is as confusing as the fictional one, and probably many a political career would be demised as in the series, hopefully with not as much blood though I am now certain that some will be spilled..

To try to understand this let's start by the game played by the National Assembly. It's only weapon is legality, voting laws that bring answers to the plight of people. The process is long and tedious and exasperating not only to the radical minds inside the opposition but even to more rational spirits like a dear friend from overseas with whom I had a long talk yesterday.  It is indeed hard to keep cool in front of the onslaught suffered by the Assembly.

The regime indeed is annulling every law the Assembly passes. Even if the political cost for the regime may be high. For example we are waiting for the oncoming, announced, annulment of two laws. One is designed to allow quick and full ownership to those who got public housing in recent years. This is a No-No for the regime as that housing is sort of a grant that people can preserve as long as they support the regime. But denying such law goes against the human nature of even many hard core chavistas who, well, like any human being want their very own refuge...

More damaging still are the ridiculous pretension that the "bono alimentación" (kind of a food stamp system) for retired people is too expensive for the regime to accept. To which it was replied immediately that if there is money for weapons then there is money to help retirees living of a pension that is today at 40 USD a month (according to DICOM already in free fall since its creation weeks ago). The problem here is that the regime cannot permit under any circumstances to have the populace believe that they can get stuff outside of Chavez or his appointed heir. I suppose that in the regime mental construct the political price to screw the elderly is preferable to the political price of people starting to think that there is life after chavismo.

I pass on other laws annulled which are more abstract to the point made here. The objective of the regime is to annul the National Assembly. Since this cannot be done easily in front of the public opinion, and because the Assembly has two atomic bombs in reserve, the regime is proceeding to discuss nincompoopy proposals such as an amendment to bring down the Assembly term from 5 years to 60 days. Amen that such a constitutional amendement would have to be voted in a referendum (article 341) that the regime cannot win without massive and thus obvious fraud.

Or go the way of a mere coup and that is that.

Indeed the National Assembly has two bombs that are very dangerous to all, but more to the regime. One is the ability to call for a Constituent Assembly that if it proves effective could result in sweeping away all of the regime office holders (articles 348 and 349).

The other bomb is immediate: the regime is short on cash and the only way to borrow more dollars is to get a favorable vote from the Assembly (as a guarantee to the lender). This one will certainly give it IF AND ONLY IF the regime accounts for how the loan will be spent, monitored through a mechanism that will not be under regime control. Something that is totally unacceptable for an hyper corrupt regime. Will the regime pick bankruptcy? Coup? Negotiation?

I am going for coup even though no one will lend a dollar to the regime in such conditions. A coup would only result in utter misery for the people with the regime's hope to control the populace through control of food. A gamble that at least Maduro, Cabello and their close corrupt entourage are willing to take with the assumption that the army will help killing whatever needs to be killed through heavy repression.

Which brings us to the picture opening this entry.

I, for one, consider that Ramos Allup and the opposition have acted to the best of their abilities. There may be better ways to proceed but NO ONE so far as made the case that there is another strategy for the opposition to corner the regime until this one blows a fuse and close the Assembly, or collapses. Either way, many will have to go to jail...

The pressure over the regime has been gradual but continued and unfaltering. And at each time the regime has shown its dark nature. First the emergency economic decree was rejected but approved through yet another judicial coup. The the courts decided that the National Assembly did not have the right to call for hearings on public servants unless allowed by the regime. Then populists reforms are rejected at political cost for the regime. Then the amnesty Law is now under threat and if the regime rejects it it will result in a strongly welded opposition against the regime. On this last one we had the Defense Minister that chimed in as to his opinion that the Amnesty Law was bad. Not only this is not true, and not of his resort, but coming from someone who is linked to coup mongers that benefited in their time from an amnesty of sorts it is simply an indefensible position.

Ramos Allup thought that the time has come to put the armed forces in front of their duty. Showing the picture of an adoring minister of defense in front of a foreign potentate, publicly, on TV, simply questions the loyalty to the nation, to democracy, of the head of the armed forces.

The implications of this are so obvious that I will dispense the patient but smart reader from further explanations.

Only one comment to close this entry: Padrino Lopez today must regret not to have accepted the massive fraud that Cabello wanted to perpetrate on December 6. I will let you think on that too.