VenEconomy: Friday of Surprises for Venezuela 
 From the Editors of VenEconomy
Latin American Herald Tribune
January 18, 2016

Last Friday January 15 brought a lot of surprises for Venezuelans (accompanied by more lies and repetition of the usual anachronisms of the Government.)

The first surprise was that, magically, after 24 months of an inexplicable silence, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) released the economic figures for the 12 months ended on September 30 2015; accumulated inflation was 141.5% during the first nine months of 2015. It should be noted that even though this figure confirms that Venezuela is still ranked as the economy with the highest inflation rate in the world, it may not yet be adjusted to reality. This figure was released when economists and analysts of the country had agreed that the level would hover near 250%, while a source of the BCV said that the real figure for 2015 was 271.5%.

Is this discrepancy owed to the rush to give some credibility to the Report and Accounts that President Nicolás Maduro was forced to submit before the National Assembly that same Friday? Or is it the habit of constantly telling lies in order not to acknowledge the failure of the Bolivarian revolution?

This leads to last Friday’s second surprise: The accountability of a president of the Bolivarian revolution before a National Assembly with a qualified majority of the opposition, before independent media, both national and international. The parliamentary minority of the ruling party bloc, along with the Supreme Court of Justice, did everything in their power a few days earlier to spare Maduro from having to go there and make his presentation. But in the end everything was useless and the result was worth the effort.

As was to be expected, Maduro once more diluted his annual Report and Accounts in pure tall tales, repeating the old same lies and blaming third parties and foreign entities for Venezuela’s economic and social catastrophe. He set aside issues of vital importance to citizens such as: the rampant insecurity, the overwhelming problems in the healthcare area, the widespread shortages of basic goods, the dire situation of state-run oil company PDVSA, the National Electric System (SEN) or the contaminated and damaged drinking water supply system, even less he made mention of the undeniable corruption and links with narco-terrorism that have the name of Venezuela under investigation with countless cases at international level. Naturally, he did not even bother to make the slightest reference to the violation of human rights by his government, or the current situation of the political prisoners.

However, the topic he did touch on – and very quickly by the way – was that of the "catastrophic figures" that Nelson Merentes (the president of the BCV) gave him. And even though he did not dwell on those "small details" making the lives of Venezuelans miserable (inflation and shortages), he used them as a preamble to issue a decree on Economic Emergency, published the day before in the Official Gazette. A political instrument that in reality imposes a state of emergency by giving extraordinary powers to Maduro so that he can continue plunging Venezuela into misery, communist rot, corruption and impunity for the violators of the civil, economic and political rights of citizens. We simply need to examine what happened with the decrees of electric emergency (issued by the late Hugo Chávez) and the states of emergency in border states established by Maduro. All this to escape the vigilance of the Democratic Unity opposition coalition in the Parliament, and to discharge the Bolivarian revolution from liability.

It is worth mentioning (and refuting the nonsense of the Government) that the state of economic and political chaos of today’s Venezuela is not due to lower oil prices, or the actions of the "American Empire," or the "creole oligarchy," or the private sector of the economy or the opposition itself. The so-called "socialism of the 21st century" is to blame for all the mess.

The third surprise came with the excellent presentation by Henry Ramos Allup, the president of the National Assembly, live on national TV, demystifying the deity of Chávez and making things absolutely clear for Maduro, the rest of public authorities and the National Armed Forces. But that’s a subject for another VenEconomy editorial.

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