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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Accidental Face of Venezuela's Opposition
The Atlantic:In 2003, Lilian Tintori was perhaps best known as the kite-surfing champion of Venezuela. She did a stint on a survival-themed reality show, lent her face to public-service billboards warning against drunk driving, and hosted radio and television shows. She was a celebrity in her home country, famed for her looks and charisma.
But since the arrest of her husband, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, during widespread protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro last year, she has become an entirely different kind of celebrity: the accidental face of Venezuelas beleaguered and often divided democracy movement. Lopez remains locked up in Ramo Verde military prison, on the outskirts of Caracas, and the government is seeking to keep him imprisoned for 10 years on charges including arson and conspiracy. In recent months, other leading opposition figures have been arrested and indicted, or lost support.
Enter Tintori. Four months after Lopezs arrest, Tintori wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post disavowing any desire to become a politician. With more than a year of campaigning for her husbands release behind her, she told me recently that she still doesnt see herself that way. Leopoldo is the politician, she said via Skype. Im a human-rights activist, a Venezuelan, a mother, and a victim myself, and Im very close to the victims of my country, to those whove had their husbands killed and their brothers imprisoned. Im just one of the Venezuelans raising my voice and standing up for the rights of Venezuelans.
Those rights have atrophied since Maduro came to power in 2013 via contested elections with only 50.6 percent of the vote compared with his challengers 49.1 percent. Maduro was the anointed successor of Hugo Chavez, who took office in 1999 and died in 2013, shortly after beginning his fourth term as president. Chávez may have initiated Venezuelas protracted political crisis, but the current situation in the country is unprecedented. With a shockingly high violent-crime rate, an inflation rate of 68.5 percent (the highest in the world, according to Bloomberg), widespread food and medicine shortages, and ever-more-frequent water cutoffs and power outages, Maduro has seen his approval rating drop from 55 percent to 25 percent, according to a survey conducted in March. (Even eight out of 10 Chavistassupporters of Chavezs highly personalized socialist, anti-imperialist governanceare sick of him or his policies.) Maduros term is supposed to last until 2018, but given the countrys worsening political and economic crisis, events may change that.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)From the Atlantic. Who would have thought?
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)would make a comment like that.
There is no doubt that if there is a coup in VZ people like you will blame the US/Obama/Capitalism while ignoring the fact that rampant inflation, unavailability of goods and political oppression are the triggers.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)If Maduro fails to govern effectively, defeat him in the next election.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)and America never supported RIGHT WING dictators in South America. Yeah Pinochet never happened. The Honduran government is so so democratic.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)has nothing to do with Maduro.
hack89
(39,171 posts)might be hard to have a fair election.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)And we absolutely know they're coup-plotters because they're in jail!
Or so the theory goes.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)much about by your own admission?
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)We're gonna run out of countries to democratize.
FSogol
(45,525 posts)betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)it happened.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)means of removing Chavez from power. We warned Chavez of the plot.
Typical Chavez apologist. Yeah, the US got Chavez to change the laws, ally with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Cuba and Qaddafi, change the textbooks to Cuban textbooks, put his people in important posts when they didn't have the expertise (oil co.) and talked him into doing things that saw his popularity plummet 50%. LOL. Dang we're good.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)But I am referring to the support the US gave the opposition, not what was claimed to have been done.
As for the rest of your post, I did read it twice and have no idea what you seem to be saying I supposedly said.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)that created opposition to his administration. I noted a few of them and joked that the US talked him into those things.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)OK. But now you can see the point I made above regarding exporting our brand. Libya and Iraq are a mess. We're (thankfully) taking a different approach, now, with Cuba.
And speaking of Cuban text books. Are you aware of the fantastic rise in literacy during Chavez' terms? And were there screw ups? I'll bet there were. I'm not apologizing nor excusing.
cali
(114,904 posts)Horse shit.
And I do not support Maduro
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)can have the hyper Reagan like government you desire. Eliminate public education and pensions, and all sociall welfare in favor or tax cuts and trickle down. It will be heaven really!
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)and economy immesurably. Maduro has only Maduro to blame.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)If what you say is true the VZ people can replace him with someone else. You base your opinions on the embedded media. They do have a long tradition of shilling for right wing dictators like Pinochet. The VZ opposition are a bunch of Ted Cruze types.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)Approval ratings:
August 2014 39%
Novem 2014 24.5% http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKCN0JG29T20141202
January 2015 22% http://www.voanews.com/content/venezuela-maduro-approval-rating-lowest-point/2583540.html
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)such and unbiased source. The American media has shilled for Pinochetists and coup plotters in the past and voa is an aknowledged American propaganda outfit. If those polls are true Maduro will lose. The polls have been incorrect in the past. The elections there have been found fair by the UN and Jimmy Carter.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)second. Of course, you googled to give me a source that disputes these findings, right? Of course you didn't. You're all about propaganda. NO FACTS.
Attack the source when you don't like the facts. Propaganda 101. I see you've been taught well, comrade.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)VZ citizens to vote Maduro out, why the dismissal of simple elections
There are plenty of facts that dispute the US bipartisan consensus of VZ. That consensus has gotten into one stupid conflict after another.
If the Obama branch of the neocons are going to support the stuff they should stop complaining that nobody has arrested Cliven Bundy. Stop complaining about Larry Klaymen agitating for a coup, or Ted Cruze ruining government because that is exactly the sort of shit VZ people have had to deal with.
Obama's done some nice things foreign policy wise but he has never recognized that keeping neocons on at the state department gives them and opportunity to sabotage his efforts. Your political opponants are not going to help you implement policy or give you credibility.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)Maduro can right the ship, that doesn't seem likely to happen. He has some serious problems in his country right now, and his blaming everyone but himself isn't helping anything.
hack89
(39,171 posts)sounds like there has already been a coup from the inside.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Guess he was a dictator.
hack89
(39,171 posts)US presidential EOs cannot change or nullify existing law. A president cannot create a new law through an EO. More importantly, EOs can be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Maduro has none of those limitations - he can pass any law he wants with no vote from the legislature.
Maduro got decree powers only after his government removed an opposition legislator through trumped up charges - that was the only way he could get the votes he needed.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)began his slide into unpopularity (pre-coup). The people of VZ were afraid then that the changes were going to lead to dictatorial rule.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)will once again be subjects of the global oligarchs who held them in a condition of serfdom and will return them to an even more extreme nightmare state of crushing poverty than they were in prior to Chavez' election.
Isn't that special? The system works!
bhikkhu
(10,724 posts)I'd have to know a lot more to come to any kind of conclusion, and, frankly, we have so many problems in our own backyard that are hard enough to keep up with. Maybe that's why there are so many armchair experts on foreign politics - such things seem easier to judge and solve from a great distance, from a perspective (objectively) of general ignorance.