You still miss the point, even this guy was closer to it then you when he points out, as I said, that when Chevez took over things started turning around. What you fail to realize, so does this guy, is that despite the turnaround you still had a population that was basically a 50/50 political split or damn near as close to it as you can get because obviously Chevez would have to come in slightly over which he did. But that doesn't negate how hard he had to fight to get those two, three, four percentage points over.

"it was those power struggles that were increasing against him"

"his numbers were declining every year"

He then started implementing taking control over the private sector of industry...it was those people who were driving up against his policies and feeding money into candidates who ran against him.

He's no less guilty than anyone else wanting to selfishly maintain control through selfish means, taking that which belongs to others which in essence denied them the ability to form power against him.

It's all about the power, the greed, the control. When you use your power to take away the power of the people then you have problems, more problems than you can handle.

That happened on his own watch, sure there was fluctuation in the global oil economy, that didn't help matters but still there was no outside influence to what happened to him, pure and simple, he made the bed he ended up laying in.

Maduro's problems stems from the fact that after Chevez death he wasn't willing to be fair and honest, his cheated the people by lying about the death because it was so close to the election, he was next in line to succeed Chevez in death and he needed a larger time frame between the death and the election to implement policy and make changes that would favor him in an election. That's exactly what he did. He set up the dice to roll in his favor. Power and greed corrupt, many people enter politics with well intentions but they get that whiff of power then suddenly they change, it's no longer about the people it's all about them. This all came about because of things they did of their own volition....this is what started it, this was the initial cause....and I grant you due process in the claim sanctions only made matters worse for the people and lifting sanctions would make things better but the underlying dirty dastardly deeds of the politics involved would still be there and regardless if people have a fully belly or not it's still not going to sit well with those who had the most to lose in all this.