If 46% turnout is a sign of undemocratic elections, what does that mean for the US, where turnout has hovered between 48 and 58 percent for half a century?
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Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. The price of oil per barrel has gone from $40 to $75 just since Trump was elected. Even in an economy this broken and dependent on oil revenues, there is tremendous incentive to fix broken wells and cash in on fast rising oil prices. Stay tuned.
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Has President Trump called Maduro yet to congratulate him?
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It's unfortunate to see how many pundits, and indeed many in this comments section, use this as an excuse to denigrate leftist policies when the real story is, and should be, the suffering of the Venezuelan people by a autocratic and corrupt regime.
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Where are Sean Penn and Danny Glover now?
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If the people keep choosing these people then you get what you voted for
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The majority of the poor voted to retain their socialist leaders in both Cuba and Venezuela. Although both poor and middle class lose it feels good to the poor to see their ranks grow. Human nature.
I can't help but notice that former enthusiastic supporters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela such as Bernie Sanders and Sean Penn have gone conspicuously quiet over the last several years as the revolution has continued its glorious march of progress toward a worker's paradise.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/07/AR200512...
In 2005 we in the Northeast were facing a crippling rise of 38% in heating oil. The oil reserves for the poor were running out so our representatives, yes, accepted heating oil so they would not freeze to death. I assume you with your christian morality would have preferred that they and their children stiffen their backbones and carry on.
It is only because of antiquated "red-baiters' like you that
have they gone silent. They put compassion over politics.
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How can a currency that has no value be overvalued? This is a sad time for Venezuela and for Venezuelans, a once-proud people brought to lethal penury by a woefully inept and corrupt government.
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In Venezuela we are witnessing the future of the United States of America under a trump regime with one party Republican rule - complete with "food boxes" as trump's solution to food aid to starving Americans.
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In the face of economic and political attack, with collapse in price of their main commodity, it's impressive that substantial portion of the Venezuelan population continues to resist the campaign to overthrow the government. They may not like where things are at now, but they know how much worse it will be if the 'regime change' efforts promoted by the bully from the north succeed.
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This is what never ceases to amaze me from the 'intellectual liberals' like you Rick. You all seem to ignore the fact that this government prints money out of control, destroys private business, disintegrates its healthcare systems, allows illegal drugs to freely flow inside its territory, jails, kills or expels its opposition and yet it is the Bully to the North who is the bad guy in all of this. This story is plain and simple: socialism does not work. Period. Corruption is everywhere, and it seems like capitalism is the only way to keep it at bay - not your sorry, recycled socialism!
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I feel terrible for the people of Venezuela. It was clear from the beginning that this election was going to be a fraud, and now a leader who has lead them to starvation and at the same time has shown blatant disregard for the people's situation gets to keep his power. He promises that he will fix everything, but most likely he will only make things worse.
Hopefully one day Venezuela will get the change that it needs.
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I suppose Venezuela will become the next hot spot for travel, now that the au courant have all done Cuba.
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What a travesty. It's dumbfounding and shameful that Maduro get's another chance at leading Venezuela. I truly feel sorry for Venezuelans. Maduro's win is like pouring gasoline on an already raging fire, with devastating consequences.
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I imagine that it’s much easier said than done, but I can’t help to wonder what it will take for the people of Venezuela to finally rise up against this man and his government?
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It shouldn't be surprising when voters in another country elect a corrupt and destructive president when we do the same here, and call it a victory for freedom.
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Our military and CIA’s purpose is to impose the will of multinational corporations and US aligned oligarchs worldwide. Anytime a country proposing healthcare for all or using the benefits of their natural resources to help all their citizens, they are in the crosshairs of being overthrown. The US is in the business of installing right-wing governments favorable to the plundering corporate interests, approved by Neo-liberals and Neocons alike.
In 1953 the US overthrew democratically elected Premiere Mosaddeq who was going to nationalize their oil, at the behest of BP oil. In 1974 Nixon made a deal the Saudis that all oil deals would be made in US dollars ( petrodollars), and in exchange the US military would protect them. When Saddam Hussein threatened not to use the US dollar for oil trades, this was a reason for war. Likewise Libya, Syria and Iran were planning to not use the US dollar in oil trades and were dealt with. Venezuela has switched to a crypto currency for oil transactions and has nationalized it’s oil.
Venezuela has the world largest proven oil reserves. Now it is Venezuela facing economic warfare, such as sanctions, by these multinational corporations turned on them, with our military and CIA’s help. Venezuela is facing hardship because of US sanctions. It is all about US control of oil and natural resources. Venezuela is not a threat to the US, but keeps trying to overthrow them.
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Hi Steve,
Do you know what year the Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized and all multinationals left the country?
Do you who was running the oil industry in Venezuela at its peak?
Do you know to this day which country is the best client for Venezuelan Oil?
Do you know when was the last time that Venezuela had a democratic change of leadership?
Do you know who in Venezuela controls the executive, the military, the judicial, the press, the congress and 99% of the economy?
Answering these question may help you direct the blame for Venezuela's misery to where it belongs.
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A lot of confused facts in this. Sanctions by multinationals? What does that mean? What do you make of the government's "appropriation" of the multinational's assets?
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Maduro is the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Barrack Obama of Venezuela. As a matter of fact Maduro's predecessor and mentor was chummy with president Obama.
Despite its oil wealth Venezuela is a disaster.
Trump should exercise the American right of dominion over the Western Hemisphere and rescue the Venezuelan people from the crippling poverty and hunger that Maduro subjects them to.
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You wrote "Trump should exercise the American right of dominion over the Western Hemisphere ..."
I gotta tell you that the despite the more than 100 years of US military invasions, support for US friendly dictators and corporate thievery in the "Western Hemisphere", the US still has ZERO "right of dominion".
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This is what you get from left wing politics. Never forget that. Where is Sean Penn these days anyway?
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We know how they feel.
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Are you kidding? The people are starving to death! This is either a bad joke or a delusional remark.
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Yes, because electing a leader that you dislike is totally the same as a leader who has lead the country to starvation being "re-elected" in a sham election.
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You are joking, right??
The official turnout was 46%. So it looks like Venezuela election participation has dropped to the level of the United States. I don't expect the Times or the State Department to argue that such low voter turnout in the US means we don't have a democracy and promote a call for the violent overthrow of the US government. No matter what the voter turnout in Venezuela was and no matter the margin of victory since Chavez originally won its elections, the US government claimed that Chavez and Maduro after him were dictators. This is "regime change" propaganda. This is a manipulation of reality that the Times commonly calls "fake news." The most powerful country in the world wants to make sure that governments independent of its imperial strategies don't succeed, don't survive. And so countries are subjected to devastating economic sanctions, political isolation, CIA sabotage, assassinations and invasions. Iran, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Congo, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Vietnam, Cambodia… the list is very long. Democracy is the last thing that the 1% and their media mouthpieces want to see.
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"The official turnout was 46%". Yes the "official" government also "officially" says that there are no hunger in Venezuela and no crisis.
Please don't trivialize the serious crisis (economic and democratic) that the Venezuelan people are enduring and is all caused by the Maduro regime.
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Communism fails once again.
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I thought the usual thing you say here is "socialism has never worked wherever it's been tried', and just hope nobody mentions France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, etc. Or highly popular socialist programs in the U.S., like Social Security, Medicare, public infrastructure spending, etc. Or the fact that vast corporate subsidies, bank bailouts and military spending are socialism for corporations.
I hear you though: it gets harder by the day or justify our wealth disparities, our child poverty rates and our disastrously decaying infrastructure without invoking the bogeyman, "Communist"!
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It is true that the disaster that is the Venezuelan regime cannot be called socialist of anything else (perhaps a mafia-state like today's Russia is a better analogy but with vastly more inept leaders).
However, It is also true that most of the new socialist-critics were quite supportive of Chavez when he was swimming in oil money and promoting 21 Century socialism. It didn't matter much to these new critics at the time the level of corruption, authoritarianism and economic mismanagement of the Chavez regime.
Venezuela today is living the inescapable consequences of 20+ years of Chavismo and yes of "21 century socialism".
I am not a fan of Maduro and the other socialists throughout Latin America. But, I remember reading when the leftists took over. The Right was totally ignoring the needs of the less fortunate just as it occurred in Cuba. Now the country has to deal with a socialist that is taking the country down.
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Maduro won nothing. The whole election was a scam, and you write a headline that say, "Madero Wins". This is misleading and works into a Maduro propaganda machine. It is not despite disillusionment. It is worse, far worse, than disillusionment. People are starving to death and refugees are in the making. You get to that later, but the headline is a disillusionment.
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Say Bernie, how is that workers paradise looking to you today?
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It looks like a corrupt president who's only in it for the money and the power.
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Sanders never suggested Venezuela was a "workers' paradise". The country doesn't even have a socialist economy, since aside from the oil industry it's dominated by private sector businesses.
An honest person would acknowledge that Sanders discussed the European, especially Scandinavian, social democracies as a model for reform in the US.
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Yet so many European democracies with strong social welfare programs remain free and well fed. It's almost like you're irresponsibly using the complex problems of a single Latin American country to draw a very broad, very weak conclusion...
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A fifty percent voter turnout in a country with violent crime, a failing health system, and food shortages, would generally indicate a population that has lost confidence in their institutions of government and their power to use them to effect positive change: Venezuela.
There is another country with a fifty percent voter turnout, uncontrolled mass murder, a failing health system, rising hunger and malnutrition among the poor as food stamps and school lunch programs are cut, and a population that has lost confidence in their institutions of government and their power to use them to effect positive change: _______(fill in the blanks).
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To the representative of Spain, I assume you enjoy the New York Times, and the freedoms under which it is published. Are there any such publications available in Venezuela? Massive freedoms - across the board - that is what we have in the USA.
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Do NOT compare the US to Venezuela! We do not have rising hunger and malnutrition, we do not intimidate voters in any way; we live in a democracy where you can choose to vote if you are a citizen, every time, without any of the tactics used by Maduro - our candidates and potential candidates are not jailed on trumped up charges or under house arrest. Also, the government does not (for the most part) take over private industry and claim it for itself. Venezuela is communist, and it's people are truly suffering.
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Yes, I do enjoy the NYT and the Washington Post which are under assault by a US government that questions the existence of the free press. Those massive freedoms in the USA also exist in Europe and are not questioned. Buena suerte...
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