Even before Hugo Chavez’s death was officially announced, his anointed successor Nicolas Maduro showed signs he was not entirely in touch with reality when he told the people of Venezuela:
“We have no doubt, the time will come in history when we can create a scientific commission to show that Comandante Chávez was attacked with this disease [cancer]…We have no doubt that our fatherland’s historic enemies looked for a way to harm our Comandante’s health… We already have plenty of clues about this, it’s a very serious matter that will have to be investigated by a special committee of scientists.”
Things have only gone downhill from there since Maduro barely won a highly-suspect election over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles and was sworn in as president.
After calling the election results “irreversible” and rejecting Capriles’s call for an audit of the election results, the election commission, controlled by supporters of Maduro, agreed to a partial audit which Capriles has rejected.
Capriles has insisted that the audit process be rigorous and include all relevant paperwork from polling centers.
“If we don’t have access to those notebooks, we’re not going to take part in an audit that would be a joke on Venezuelans and a joke on the world,” he told a local TV station.
“The next step will be to challenge the election, which must take place in the next few days. With all the proof, all the elements we now have, we are going to challenge the election.”
The government’s response to Capriles’s challenge has been furious and hysterical.
Diosdado Cabello, the national assembly president, has pledged to investigate Mr Capriles for his involvement in the wave of violence that followed the elections. At least eight deaths were linked to the unrest. “The deaths ordered by the fascist murderer Capriles cannot go unpunished,” Mr Cabello tweeted this week.
Iris Varela, the prisons minister, also weighed in, saying she was preparing a jail cell for Mr Capriles, and that he should be held responsible for the violence.
The government has accused anti-government demonstrators of setting fire to Cuban-run health clinics, although an investigation by Provea, a human rights group in Caracas, found the claims were false. Local newspapers have published photographs of the clinics the government said were attacked, showing no trace of damage.
Cabello has actually barred opposition members from speaking before the national assembly because they refuse to acknowledge that Maduro legitimately won the election. This strikes me as more fascistic than anything Capriles has done.
The New York Times reported that the father of one of those killed in post-election violence disputed the government’s version of events:
The Justice Ministry said that [Ender José] Bastardo, a mechanic, was among a group of people celebrating Mr. Maduro’s victory in Cumanacoa, in eastern Venezuela, when they were attacked by a group that opened fire. Mr. Bastardo was killed and two other people were wounded.
But Mr. Bastardo’s father, William Bastardo, 45, said he and his son were marching in a protest against Mr. Maduro’s election, banging pots, when shots were fired from a nearby building. “I demand justice for my son,” the father said at the morgue in the nearby city of Cumaná, “and that peaceful protest be respected.”
And Capriles called off a planned opposition rally last week because of fear that Maduro supporters would try to instigate violence.
The latest in the downward spiral of events in Venezuela is the arrest of American filmmaker Timothy Tracy.
“The gringo who financed the violent groups has been captured,” Maduro said in comments carried on state television. “I gave the order that he be detained immediately and passed over to the attorney general’s office.”
…..
Tracy’s friends in the United States say the budding filmmaker, who was arrested Wednesday at the Caracas airport, has become a scapegoat.“Tim Tracy is not affiliated with any governmental intelligence agency — is not even remotely associated,” said Jesse Herman, a friend who studied at Georgetown [University] with Tracy. “The whole thing is ridiculous. It’s almost comical, the way he’s being portrayed.”
In a news conference Thursday, Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez said the government has Tracy’s videos and other evidence that show he had a close relationship with the “extreme right” that is intent on taking power.
Rodriguez said that “from the way he acted, there is no doubt that he is from an intelligence agency.”
“He knows how to infiltrate, how to recruit sources,” Rodriguez added. “The mission was to take us to civil war…. Why a civil war? Because a civil war would lead to the intervention of a foreign power to bring order to the country.”
The minister then showed a video, “so the people in the country can see what we are confronting.”
But in the video, purportedly shot by Tracy, young people joke and mug for the camera in a drab room. It is unclear how the video points to a destabilization plan. Nor does it explain Tracy’s role.
Huffington Post provides evidence of Tracy’s history of subversion:
The Georgetown University English graduate was a story consultant on the 2009 documentary “American Harmony,” about competitive barbershop quartet singing, and produced the recent Discovery Channel program “Under Siege,” about terrorism and smuggling across the U.S.-Canada border as well the History Channel series “Madhouse,” on modified race-car drivers in North Carolina.
The Obama administration is for now refusing to recognize Maduro as president.
Clearly Maduro and company are running scared in a way Chavez never did.
