As a deepening economic crisis aggravates Venezuela’s severe social and political unrest, it has exposed the fragility of its institutions to deal with the situation. Plagued by long years of populism kept afloat on a sea of oil, the plunging prices of crude have resulted in a lethal mix of goods shortages and hyperinflation, threatening to push the country into a state of chaos. Already, there are snaky queues for food and medicines and a crippling shortage of electricity that has forced a two-day week for government employees and blackouts across the country. The oft-repeated grievance of President Nicolás Maduro, the charismatic Hugo Chávez’s hand-picked successor, that Venezuela is the victim of an ‘economic war’ is beginning to have an increasingly hollow ring as his government struggles to repay the massive external debt it accumulated during the oil boom even as it is forced to cut down on imports of basic necessities to avoid a default.
As a rash of criminal activity and a >surge of angry protests break out on the streets, the opposition, buoyed by a victory in the congressional elections last December, is looking to oust Mr. Maduro. The focus now is on the fate of the recall referendum, with the opposition claiming it has the required 1.85 million signatures to force one and the government dismissing this as fraudulent, something that a pliant National Electoral Council has endorsed by declaring about a third of the signatures on the petition as invalid. The opposition, led by Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate, wants the referendum to be held by January next year as a victory would mean a fresh presidential election. Were the referendum to take place later, then a Maduro loss would merely mean that his Vice-President runs the country until 2019. The big question is whether the country can afford to wait for the political process to play itself out. Time and patience are wearing thin. It is becomingly apparent that Mr. Maduro, who has become isolated within the region — he was described as a “traitor to ethics” by the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States — will be unable to carry the country for much longer with rhetoric of jingoism and victimhood. The President has the backing of the armed forces and a government-stacked Supreme Court and is now armed with emergency powers to “confront all…international and national threats”. It is imperative that he allows some sort of international mediation with the immediate aim of calming political tempers and dealing with the shortage in food and medicines. The risks otherwise are a slip into dictatorship or, even worse, anarchy.