The army in crisis-hit Venezuela has to choose whether it is “with the constitution or with (President Nicolas) Maduro,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said Tuesday. / AFP PHOTO /
by Alexander MARTINEZ
CARACAS , Venezuela (AFP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro owes his rule to his left-wing predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, and he’s not about to let anybody forget it.
He often gives speeches in front of portraits of Chavez, whom he calls “the eternal commander,” speaks of continuing the “Chavismo” brand of socialism, and wears the red shirts or caps that are emblematic of Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution.”
The props are meant to underline continuity: that Maduro stands for all that Chavez represented, and is unwavering in promoting that legacy.
But they also serve to highlight differences between the current president and the one who ruled Venezuela for 14 years until his death of cancer in March 2013.
Chavez, a former military man, had a surfeit of charisma and a fiery-yet-folksy manner that attracted broad popularity, itself underpinned by generous public spending backed by sky-high oil revenues.
Maduro, a mustachioed 53-year-old former union leader and bus driver, comes up short on all those counts.
Rails against US
Like his predecessor, he gives hours-long speeches and often lambastes the United States for its “imperial arrogance.” But the diatribes are unleavened by the easy manner shown by Chavez.
And Venezuela’s oil-export dependent economy is crumbling, brought low by prices for crude that have slid by two-thirds from when Chavez was in power.
One of Maduro’s most symbolic breaks with Chavez’s legacy has been to bring Venezuela’s clocks forward half an hour, to the same timezone in summer as Washington — scrapping a change Chavez introduced in December 2007.
He explained that was to give citizens a few minutes more daylight, in an effort to have them use less electricity from a grid that is crippled by a hydroelectric energy shortage.
That power problem has also prompted him to cut government employees’ work weeks to just two days, and led to regular blackouts.
Chavez’s ‘heir’
Maduro, a lawmaker who was speaker of the national assembly for a year before becoming foreign minister for Chavez in 2006, was named vice president in October 2012, and Chavez designated him his political heir.
Maduro took over as acting president after Chavez’s death on March 5, 2013.
The following month, Maduro was elected to the post, but with only the narrowest of victories over an opposition figure, Henrique Capriles.
With economic woes piling up, Maduro’s popularity rating soon slid, and now around 70 percent of Venezuelans want a change of government, according to a poll by Venebarometro.
Maduro has dismissed the crisis as “an economic war waged by the right,” which he claims is backed by the United States.
But even many die-hard Chavistas criticize Maduro’s performance, despite his efforts to maintain social programs for education and health for the poor in the face of falling revenues.
Empty supermarket and pharmacy shelves and runaway inflation that topped 180 percent last year and could hit 700 percent this year have eroded support from the working class he used to count on.
Rampant violence and corruption — two areas Maduro had promised but failed to bring under control — were also taking their toll.
‘Not charismatic’
“Chavismo under Maduro has dramatically weakened,” said Luis Vicente Leon, head of the Datanalisis survey company.
“He’s not a charismatic leader” like Chavez, he said.
That slipping support was evident in December when Chavismo suffered what Maduro called a “slap” — its worst electoral defeat in 17 years that handed control of the national assembly to the opposition.
Although constrained by the executive branch and the supreme court, the opposition-led house is trying to stage a recall referendum to oust Maduro.
Born in Caracas and a professed Christian, Maduro as a teenager played guitar in a rock band called Enigma.
He became a union leader for workers on the Caracas metro and received communist training in Cuba in the 1980s.
He is married to Cilia Flores, a former state prosecutor, and has a son from a previous relationship.
“He’s a good politician, but he’s no statesman,” said Nicmer Evans, a political analyst who supports the Chavismo line but is critical of Maduro’s government.
“He has instincts learned from president Chavez, but has found it tough to develop his own leadership style,” he said.
Without Chavez’s guiding hand, Maduro started to “drift,” Evans said, adding that many of Maduro’s officials also saw themselves as more competent than their boss.
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