IF VENEZUELA were a democracy, President Nicolás Maduro’s bid to win re-election would certainly fail. He leads a regime that has been in power for 19 years. Its economic policies have made life intolerable for most of the country’s 34m citizens. Food is in short supply, and nearly 90% of Venezuelans say they do not have enough money to eat properly. The contraction of the economy is the biggest in the history of Latin America. Prices are doubling nearly every month. At least a million people have left the country in the past four years.
Yet almost nobody thinks the president, who looks as well fed as ever, will lose the one-round election scheduled for May 20th. At rallies of loyalists and dragooned state workers held in barricaded streets, Mr Maduro talks of getting 12m votes, even more than Hugo Chávez, the charismatic founder of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution”, who died in 2013. To suffering voters he promises relief. “I am ready to make a change,” he said on May...Continue reading
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