Venezuela’s
opposition has played into Nicolás Maduro’s hands/Julia Buxton is professor of comparative politics at Central European University, Budapest.
The
Guardian | 4 de marzo de 2014
Filling
the void left by a charismatic leader is always a challenge, and Venezuela’s
president, Nicolás Maduro, has struggled to command the authority of his
predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez. The burden of succession has proved all the
more onerous as it has fallen to Maduro to address the difficult decisions that
were deferred or bypassed by Chávez, who died a year ago.
Among
the challenges bequeathed to Maduro, who assumed the presidency by a razor-thin
majority in elections last April, two have been pressing: an appalling problem
of crime and corruption that has propelled Venezuela into the top 10 of global
corruption and homicide indices; and a dysfunctional economy.
Crime
and corruption are longstanding, inherited by Chávez from the politicians of
the old regime who sought to remove him in the failed coup of 2002. They were
exacerbated by constant ministerial turnover and the government’s failure to
engage with these issues as social and institutional problems, rather than
facets of capitalism that would fade under Chávez’s model of 21st century
socialism.
