RE: Venezuela, we want you free.
Hi @serhat.
Let me give you some information that can better locate you in the situation that Venezuela currently lives.
In 1996 the price of oil was only 10 dollars for the Venezuelan basket and sparked a crisis that caused Chávez to win the elections in 1998. During Chavez's presidency, oil had an average price of about one hundred dollars per barrel. Many trillions of dollars entered the country, but most were spent at their sole discretion to expand their revolutionary project in Latin America, perhaps 60% of the revenue was spent buying loyalties from countries in the region.
But it is not only the grotesque amount of money that the Chávez and Maduro government made disappear in the last nineteen years, which they handled like a private account without any institutional control because they eliminated them, and that surpassed the trillion dollars; Yes a 1 followed by 12 zeros. The main problem was that they destroyed all national infrastructure of all kinds, and I'm talking about everything. There is no sector that has not been affected by the policies of this government that seeks to keep in power for several decades.
I give you a very brief summary of the wanderings of this government, because it requires hundreds of pages just to describe each of the cases in which this government has destroyed the infrastructure. Only the most notorious:
The oil industry was taken by the government in stages, until finally it expropriate all the multinationals like Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, etc. They took control of the entire oil industry because it was the one that produced the money in the country. When it all began, Venezuela produced just under 4 million barrels of oil per day, seeking to grow to 6 million that was the goal. Today oil production does not reach one million eight hundred thousand barrels per day, and as they incurred illegal debts with predatory countries like China and Russia, more than half of that production is destined to pay those debts. It was an agreement of many arms and little money for oil. As you can see, it is not just the problem of the price of a barrel of oil.
They expropriated the entire cement industry because they said that the government was going to put them to produce, as a result of which we have more than 10 years without the possibility of buying cement anywhere in the country. Can you imagine that you can not build anything like a citizen?
Venezuela before Chávez was the main assembler of vehicles for all Latin America, same history of government intervention, Venezuelans do not know that is to buy a vehicle in more than 10 years, you can have the money, but there are no vehicles.
Expropriated the paper industry, there is no toilet paper, there is no paper for newspapers unless you are a newspaper that supports the government.
Expropriated the glass industry, as a result there are no glass containers.
Expropriated land and farms at the national level, there is no production of meat, milk or almost any food item. He had also expropriated the industry that supplied the farmers, so now there are no seeds, fertilizers, and everything you need to be able to sow.
I can continue to tell you everything else because there are hundreds of cases of what has destroyed the government, but I think with that you have a basic idea of what happens.
But the sad thing about the situation is that this is not the greatest damage that this government has caused to Venezuela.
Maduro won the elections with less than 1% with an electoral council totally pro Chavez, let's say it was a clean election. They decided that the Venezuelan central bank was no longer autonomous but responded to the interests of the president, so it would no longer report inflation data, international reserves, and all the operations that the bank does. We Venezuelans do not know how much money is spent, we do not know how much official inflation is because it is not reported. Nor is anything reported on the health situation and any kind of government data, especially if it shows that things are going wrong.
There were congressional elections, which the opposition won with an absolute majority. Only three days before the new congress took office, they decided to appoint a new supreme court of the nation, with all members favorable to the government. The following week, a smaller court, which has no authority to undo a marriage, accepts a request to challenge two of the 112 opposition deputies. The majority of the congress claims that the court has no jurisdiction and does not accept the decision. The supreme court favoring the government, only a week after taking power, decides that the congress is in contempt and that all the decisions they make are not valid. More than two years later the new Congress has not been able to issue a single law! The corrupt supreme court, in fact, who presides over it is a convicted murderer, which in itself is illegal, decided to give a special law to President Maduro to govern without the approval of Congress, which is totally unconstitutional. With that law is that they have acquired the debts with China, Russia and other predatory countries. In fact Goldman Sachs is taking advantage of the situation buying 3.2 billion dollars for 850 million, a great bargain !.
In 2009 they expropriated all gold production, which at that time represented about 25 billion dollars a year, today we have no right to know how much gold is produced. All that was delivered to the military last year (buying loyalties?).
Last year a referendum had to be made to President Maduro. He was 100 percent sure that he was going to lose him and he had to withdraw from power. The supreme court legally blocks the referendum.
Last year the elections of the 24 national governorates were to be held, which they will surely lose. They have not been made and do not respond or explain. The elections for national mayors had to be made two months ago, nor have they been done because they are going to lose them.
The straw that broke the glass of water was that this corrupt supreme court of justice decided that the president was to take all the powers of the congress and legislate alone. But the attorney general who is from his own party could no longer remain silent and declared that this was a coup by the supreme court. The president and the supreme court retracted that decision but the Venezuelan people took to the streets, and they go more than sixty days in continuous protests every day, and the premise is that Maduro has to go now!
Maduro decided that all those arrested for protest would be tried by military courts. Thousands of people are being tried by military courts for protest.
But they are not surprising, last week Maduro decided that the solution is to modify the national constitution to prevent them from violating it. And he has called a national constituent assembly to modify the entire Venezuelan state and its institutions, but with the shamelessness that they will choose 512 members but not by popular vote, but half are decided among their supporters and the rest by vote popular. He wants to change the constitution to stay there without the need for elections!
Just six hours after introducing the proposal, the national council that favors Maduro accepted it and opened the registration process for a week later. He has already set a date, July 30 to make the elections of that constituent national assembly.
The brazenness with which they have decided to run the country is unprepared, and I would not believe it if I were living it .....
The problem is not the price of oil and it never was, it is hunger, the lack of medicines, basic supplies of all kinds, and especially the scarcity of hope that we can get out of this situation in the short term.
Venezuela always helped all the countries that had problems, and now that Venezuela suffers from them, they all look the other way.
But make no mistake, Venezuela is going to get ahead and when we do, we will look at all our neighbors with the wisdom of the experience lived, and as good Venezuelans, we will come immediately to help them so they do not live what we are living. ....
We Venezuelans have no access to news of any kind, because the government has blocked all means that transmit information such as international news agencies. The only way we have to inform ourselves is through social networks that can not be blocked. Although that is also dangerous, a young woman was arrested by a military court just for issuing a tweet.
So it is very likely that you will receive more information from Venezuela than I receive. Of course, only the government wants you to listen ... But the situation is so serious that it can no longer hide ...