Vox - How Venezuela (America?) went from a rich democracy to a dictatorship on the brink of collapse

[TomCADem]

In Turkey, you also have Erodan moving to consolidate his power and erase Democratic institutions. Is this just a preview of what we have to look forward to here.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/19/16189742/venezuela-maduro-dictator-chavez-collapse

Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, is scrambling to cling to power as his country is battered by an unprecedented economic crisis. And in the process, he’s becoming an autocrat.

Maduro is tossing political opponents in prison. He is cracking down on growing street protests with lethal force, with government security forces killing at least 46 demonstrators in recent months. He has repeatedly postponed regional government elections in order to stave off threats to his party’s power. And in July he held a rigged election for a special legislative body that supplanted the country’s parliament — the one branch of government that was controlled by his political opposition. The new superbody has carte blanche to rewrite the country’s constitution and expand his executive powers. Maduro and his supporters now have total control of the government, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down.

It’s difficult to overstate how dire Venezuela’s economic plight is. The country entered a deep recession in 2014 spurred by the drop in global oil prices, and cumbersome regulations on its currency are helping produce record-breaking inflation. The International Monetary Fund estimates that prices in Venezuela are set to increase more than 700 percent this year. Seventy-five percent of the country’s population has lost an average of 19 pounds of bodyweight between 2015 and 2016 due to food shortages throughout the country.

But Maduro has done everything he can to prevent swelling popular discontent from limiting his power. His tactics place him among a special league of democratic authoritarians like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has used a referendum to expand the powers of his presidency, imprisoned political prisoners, attacked the judiciary branch of his government, and restricted free press in the wake of an attempted coup against him last year. Both leaders use crisis as a pretext for strengthening executive power while leaving the shells of their country’s democratic institutions intact.

[Zorro]

1. It's just Bolivarian Democracy in action

Just ask our resident Chavistas about how awesome it is.

[snooper2]

3. They stopped trying to support him

Interesting actually

[procon]

2. This has a familiar ring to it. nt