Do you believe it?

Maduro celebrates his election victory alongsie Maradona.

The country suffers hyperinflation a soaring homicide rate and a shrinking economy. Stores and pharmacies are bare of food, medicines and toilet paper. It's hemorraging people, who are fleeing this disaster area.

And yet the president, who is notoriously corrupt and lives high while his people suffer, got reelected by a landslide.

Does anybody at all believe that Sunday's presidential election results in Venezuela were fair and democratic?

Venezuelan president/dictator Nicolas Maduro and his crowd may have read the recent and interesting book 'How to Rig an Election,' by two British academics. The book observes that old fashioned ballot box stuffing is now passé. Instead, today's authoritarian leaders stack the deck in their own favor before a single vote gets cast, thru techniques such as registering more voters in regions where they are popular and setting up more voting stations in those same areas.

In Venezuela, the government started preparing for the election many months ago by imprisoning or banning from public office the opposition's strongest potential candidates. Maduro also linked the reception of food aid - vital in a starving nation - to allegiance to Maduro. Whether or not the government really knew which candidate voters supported didn't matter: It was the impression that counted.

That was also why the government set up red tents outside of voting stations - sometimes so close that they violated election rules - for government loyalists to check in after voting. The message was clear: 'We're rewarding you for voting for us.' Government offices also required public employees to attend pro-Maduro rallies.

These were all crude attempts to harness the still-great public resources of the nation with the world's largest oil reserves in favor of Maduro.

The government might not even have needed to manipulate the vote counts, but it probably did, anyway. After all, many election observers said that the electoral commission's reported 47% voter turnout seemed wildly exaggerated in light of the many near-vacant voting stations. After a previous election, the voting machine company, Smartmatic, charged that

Maduro has good reason to hold on to power. (His new term ends in 2025.) He and his buddies are living high while his people suffer. And, if he were to be overthrown, his enemies would surely try to prosecute Maduro for corruption and human rights violations, forcing him to take refuge with few remaining friends, in Cuba, Syria or Russia.

Instead, Venezuela will sink into even deeper misery. And hundreds of thousands or millions more Venezuelans will flood into neighboring nations. And Venezuela will lose a generation of its brightest, most motivated people.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Venezuela Breaks Relations (and what else is new?)

Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez has broken all relations with Colombia - just as we knew would happen.

Colombia had presented evidence in the Organization of American States that Colombian guerrillas have been camping out quite comfortably on Venezuelan soil. Of course, that was something we all knew anyway. While working as a journalist, border-area residents told me personally some years ago about this situation.

Colombia's evidence isn't bulletproof - but it certainly looks strong. Strong enough to justify investigation by Venezuela, rather than just an angry and self-righteous slamming of the door. For me, this episode has shades of the South Korea-North Korea dispute over the recent sinking of the South's naval vessel by the North. Here, too, you have a self-described leftist/revolutionary government using military measures against a democracy, if a troubled one. Venezuela's economy is shrinking, it's got the worst inflation in the region and people can't find basic foodstuffs in stores. Chávez's response has been to repress the independent media and look for enemies to rant and rage against: the 'Empire' (read: United States) and its supposed stand-in, Colombia.

In this case, Chávez made his self-righteous speech about dignity accompanied by the one-time drug addicted Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona, a man who tattooed communist revolutionary Che Guevara on his shoulder but still sucked his fortune up his nose. Maradona, a role model whose example has undoubtedly ruined the lives of countless kids who admired 'el crack' argentino and concluded that cocaine (and crack) were no obstacle to fame and stardom. (This isn't supposed to be a post about Maradona, but the guy's ego, hypocrisy and selfishness do say something about the morality of the crowd Chávez hangs with.)

What will happen now? Venezuela will investigate the claimed guerrilla sites after giving the guerrillas ample time to leave and then declare that the guerrillas were never there.

Once new Colombian Pres. Manuel Santos takes office, the two leaders will give each other a second chance. After all, neither country's economy can afford a permanent suspension of trade.

Written by Mike Ceaser of Bogotá Bike Tours