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Friday, July 29, 2016

Venezuela Armed Forces Tighten Grip As Food Crisis Grows


Venezuela’s armed forces tighten grip as food crisis grows

President Nicolás Maduro (left) with Vladimir Padrino López, army chief and 'the most powerful man in Venezuela'©AP
President Nicolás Maduro (left) with Vladimir Padrino López, army chief and 'the most powerful man in Venezuela'
When two trucks loaded with soldiers pulled up outside his butcher shop in the Barrio Unión slum of eastern Caracas, Daniel felt a deep unease.
“They went into all the shops in the area, forcing us to sell at a loss,” says Daniel, not his real name, of the incident earlier this month. The army men demanded that Daniel sell his beef at 250 bolívares (roughly $0.25 at black market rates) a kilo, even though he explained it cost 3,000 bolívars to buy from his suppliers.
“They told me the beef belonged to the people and stayed seven hours as a huge queue formed outside. This was militarised,” said Daniel, originally from Portugal. Later he saw television news reports of the coup attempt in Turkey: “My first thought was that the same thing was also happening here.”
As socialist Venezuela faces its worst economic crisis in living memory, the country’s armed forces, under the command of defence minister General Vladimir Padrino López, have emerged as a key player.
Many were unnerved when Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, this month handed the military extraordinary powers to tackle ravaging shortages in a country where food and basic medicines are increasingly hard to find and the inflation rate is forecast to top 700 per cent.
As well as taking charge of food production and distribution, Venezuela’s ports have come under army control, and several government ministries now report directly to the defence minister and to Mr Maduro.
Giovanna de Michele, a defence expert at the Central University of Venezuela, says that, bolstered by these new powers, Gen Padrino López is now “the most powerful man in Venezuela”.
Low oil prices and years of mismanagement have left Venezuela’s economy in a parlous state, with the economy set to shrink 10 per cent this year. The crisis has given impetus to moves by opposition groups to remove Mr Maduro from office via a so-called recall referendum — a process that is under way. The country’s electoral council, which has been stymieing the proposed vote, is due to announce on Monday whether the next stage of the referendum can proceed.
But in a region once known for military coups, observers say any transition away from Mr Maduro would require the approval of the armed forces, even though Gen Padrino López says his new responsibilities are “a matter of discipline, not one of militarisation”.
An opposition supporter carrying a sign that reads "We starve. Total dictatorship" shouts at Venezuelan National Guards during clashes at a rally to demand a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins©Reuters
Venezuelan national guards hold back opposition supporters in May demanding the removal of President Nicolás Maduro
In a co-written article on the Latin America Goes Global website, Javier Corrales, a Venezuela scholar at Amherst College in the US, says the decision to lean more heavily on the army is “the clearest sign that a dangerously weak government, rapidly losing control of the situation, has taken desperate measures to survive”.
Yet with polls suggesting Venezuelans favour removing the president, Mr Corrales raises “another possible interpretation: that this was a semi-coup by the military against a rudderless, ineffective and discredited Maduro government”.
This is the clearest sign that a dangerously weak government, rapidly losing control of the situation, has taken desperate measures to survive
- Javier Corrales, Venezuela scholar at Amherst College
Others, however, believe little has changed in a country with a history of state control over the economy. Francisco Rodríguez, the Venezuelan chief economist at Torino Capital, the US investment bank, says: “We do not see this role as unprecedented, nor do we believe it signals a change in terms of the relative power of the military in society.”
Since the 2002 coup attempt that briefly ousted the late Hugo Chávez, Mr Maduro’s predecessor and the ideological inspiration for Venezuelan socialism, the country’s armed forces have been stacked with loyal generals in an attempt to create what the president calls a “civic-military union”.
Analysts say the military assures social control for the Maduro government, in return for preferential access to goods and hard currency. An opposition rally in Caracas on Wednesday to demand the activation of the recall vote was swamped by an overwhelming presence of security forces.
Mr Maduro has also promoted a number of army figures, including Gen Padrino López — an experienced and decorated soldier, respected by his troops, according to insiders — to senior government positions.

The Big Read



Joe Cummings illustration
The isolated president sits tight as his country slides deeper into chaos, writes John Paul Rathbone
One close colleague says the defence minister is “a conciliator who is respectful of the institutions and who will sacrifice anything to follow an order”. But he warns: “I fear Maduro wants Padrino López there to keep enemies away. But he will drag him down with him.”
With food riots becoming commonplace and Venezuelans flocking in their thousands to neighbouring Colombia in search of food, the armed forces face a difficult task to stave off further unrest.
Diego Moya-Ocampos, senior analyst at the IHS risk consultancy, says it is clear the military will play a bigger role over the next 12 months as the army takes control of most sectors of the economy, which “will mitigate the risks of a coup against Maduro unless sustained riots and looting over food shortages escalate”.
This will do little to lessen the unease of Daniel, the butcher, who is old enough to recall the long dictatorship in his native Portugal of António de Oliveira Salazar: “When the military have too much power they always abuse.”

Ambev Misses Earnings Estimates On Latin American Downturn

http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Industrial/ab-inbev-earnings-miss-estimates-on-latin-american-downturn-20160729

FT LatAm Viva For 29 July, 2016

FINANCIAL TIMES - Latam Viva: Your weekly briefing from the region
Unhappy anniversary
By Andres Schipani 
July 29, 2016
Another week in Venezuela: socialists celebrated the birthday of the late Hugo Chávez with a chunky cake amid ravaging food shortages; President Nicolás Maduro blamed capitalism and Pokémon Go for a culture of death and violence; and a resettled former Guantanamo prisoner who went missing showed up.
Above all, it is a country where the political deadlock continues. Six months ago, following victory amid discontent, Venezuela's opposition took over the national assembly for the first time since Chávez launched his socialist revolution in 1999. Some of its leaders vowed to remove the unpopular Mr Maduro from power within the first half of 2016. 
That did not happen and life in Venezuela has worsened with spiralling food riots. The crisis is even hitting Cuba, Mr Maduro's closest ally. In such a tense scenario, the opposition believes the only resolution will be by ousting the president. But it continues to face hurdles as it presses for progress on a referendum.
For Henri Falcón, a centrist state governor and former member of the socialist party who broke with Chávez, and is sometimes mentioned as a compromise transitional successor to Mr Maduro: "There is the risk of people getting tired, and the little social explosions we see every day could blow up. Patience has a limit." 
Venezuelans have already validated a petition to recall the president and call fresh elections. The question now is: will they succeed in removing him in the second half of 2016? Nobody knows, as the ruling socialist party is seeking to ban the opposition coalition, alleging the "greatest electoral fraud" in history.
The election authority, whose officials are influenced by the government, was due to announce whether the opposition had successfully gathered the 400,000 signatures required to activate the vote. It has pushed that announcement back till next week, while the government packed the streets with security forces to undermine opposition rallies.
An opposition supporter carrying a sign that reads "We starve. Total dictatorship" shouts at Venezuelan National Guards during clashes at a rally to demand a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia RawlinsAn opposition supporter carrying a sign that reads "We starve. Total dictatorship" shouts at Venezuelan National Guards during clashes at a rally to demand a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
As the armed forces have grown more powerful, some of the protesters who dared to demonstrate were fenced in by police and the national guard. They complained that Venezuela is increasingly "militarised", and some said the government should send soldiers to Brazil to tackle a crime wave ahead of the start of the Olympic Games.
After the mother-in-law of Bernie Ecclestone was reported kidnapped in São Paulo, a gang of transvestites attempted to rob an Australian telly crew in Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is trying to shield himself - not from Pokémon or transvestite muggers, but from allegedly abusive local judges.
Quote of the week
“Under current conditions, [Cuban] gross domestic product will dip into negative territory this year and decline 2.9 per cent in 2017. If relations with Venezuela fall apart completely, GDP could decline 10 per cent” - Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank employee.
Other views
The week in review
Venezuela’s armed forces tighten grip as food crisis grow
 
Military takes charge of food production, distribution and ports
 
 
Lula appeals to UN over Petrobras judge
 
Human rights case from Brazil’s former president looks to put prosecutors’ methods on trial
 
 
Ecclestone’s mother-in-law ‘kidnapped in Brazil’
 
Criminals said to demand record $37m ransom shortly before Rio Olympics open
 
 
Venezuela’s economic woes send a chill over closest ally Cuba
 
Warnings of rationing revive memories of post-Soviet austerity in Havana
 
 
Crunch time for attempt to oust Maduro
 
Venezuelan presidency faces push for a recall referendum
 
 
Challenges hound organisers of Rio Olympic Games
 
Hurdles range from huge logistics issues to Olympic-size rodents on a golf course