The Independent reports:
A mayor in Venezuela was arrested in dramatic scenes yesterday after dozens of armed police broke into his office and forcibly removed him from the building.
Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma was physically escorted out of the premises by Sebin officers after being accused of sowing seeds of unrest in the country and allegedly plotting a coup to bring down the government.
A trail of supporters in the building followed Mr Ledezma, of the Fearless People’s Alliance, as he was being led away to the lifts. The government have also transferred nearly all of his powers to a newly-created body.
Opposition politician Ismael Garcia wrote on Twitter that he saw Mr Ledezma carried away and said “they pulled him out of his office like he was a dog.” The charges for his arrest, without a warrant, are yet to be known.
Here’s a video of the police hauling Ledezma away. (He is the white-haired man in the center at about 1:00.) Considering the number of heavily-armed cops required, he must be a very dangerous man:
In an address to the nation, President Nicolas Maduro said Ledezma had been arrested “so that he answers for all of the crimes committed against the peace, security and constitution of our country.”
The embattled president faces record-low popularity as the tumble in oil prices has wrought product shortages, and hours-long lines for basic goods have become something of legend in Venezuela. (Earlier this month, several news outlets reported on the saga of the $755 pack of condoms.)
In Maduro’s televised address, he reiterated a claim he had made previously that the United States was behind the efforts to unseat him. “Their coup d’etat failed,” he said to applause. “Every fascist gets found out.”
One of the country’s fiercest critics of Maduro as well as former President Hugo Chavez, Ledezma joins a number of prominent activists who have been jailed amid the political chaos, including leading opposition figure Leopoldo López. Earlier this week, López and Ledezma formally asked for a transitional government by signing an open letter, according to NPR. The arrests have inspired protests within the country and drawn strong rebukes from human rights groups, foreign governments, and American officials, current and former:
Reports have emerged of the Venezuelan regime torturing Lopez and other political prisoners.
The latest alleged coup attempt was supposedly backed by the Obama administration– which some non-Venezuelan chavistas are perfectly willing to believe. In 2013, shortly before the death of his predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro expelled the US embassy’s military attache, accusing him of “proposing destabilizing plans” to members of Venezuelan armed forces. After Chavez’s death, he claimed the CIA was plotting to assassinate one of his rivals and thus trigger a coup.
And let’s not forget who (according to Venezuela’s oil minister) was responsible for Chavez’s death.
Chavez was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup which the Bush administration tacitly (and stupidly) supported, helping him to rally support against the US, as he did with his regular claims of an imminent invasion. Thirteen years later, and with a different US president, I’m not sure many Venezuelans are buying it any more.
Of course George Galloway, Seumas Milne, Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn and the usual gang of idiots continue to stand foursquare behind the increasingly desperate and repressive regime in Caracas.
Here are some comments by a chavista on the anti-regime blog Caracas Chronicles which I think sum up what many of these people really believe:
The New York Times reported:
“All us Venezuelans that express views differing from those of Nicolás Maduro have our days numbered,” said David Smolansky, the mayor of the nearby municipality of El Hatillo and a member of the opposition party. “The question is when the guillotine falls.”
Update: The Independent reports on the endless queues for basic goods (when they are available at all), and notes:
For a glimpse of how unevenly the spoils of Mr Chavez’s supposed socialist utopia are shared, you might have passed by the old Officers’ Club and Hotel at Fuerte Tiuna, the largest military base in Venezuela, on the south side of Caracas, last Tuesday. Not everyone is allowed in of course. It is for military brass and their friends, often top party officials. A pair of heavily guarded green gates to one side of the club’s entrance leads to the house President Maduro lives in.
While the rest of the country was under a strict a dry law – a total ban on alcohol sales for the four days of Mardi Gras – the elite was having a party. The perplexing boom-boom-boom of a fiesta in full swing sounded from beyond the lobby and from up a short flight of stairs. A few more steps and suddenly there was Cancun, or a version of it. Sun chairs occupied by barely dressed bodies fringed giant pools on two different levels, cash bars were weighed down with bottles of rum, whisky and tequila. A disco dance troupe did its frantic routine for revellers to follow. It was just before noon.
