Venezuela Is the Next Zimbabwe

Venezuela Is the Next Zimbabwe
As inflation rages, Nicolás Maduro seizes private farms and companies,
arresting businessmen for 'speculation.'
By LEOPOLDO MARTINEZ
Dec. 19, 2013 6:34 p.m. ET

Venezuelans went to the polls on Dec. 8 to elect more than 300 mayors
and over 2,000 city council members in a nationwide ballot. Though the
opposition coalition made some important gains in the cities, the ruling
socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro managed to edge out its rivals in the
popular vote (49% to 43%). I now fear that my country is one step closer
to becoming a full-fledged dictatorship along the lines of Zimbabwe in
Africa.

Less than a year after Hugo Chávez succumbed to cancer, Venezuela is now
mired in a crisis unprecedented during the 14 years of the so-called
"Bolivarian revolution." Chávez was certainly a ruthless authoritarian;
I know this from firsthand experience. Between 2000 and 2005, I was an
elected opposition representative challenging the comandante's agenda in
the National Assembly.

I was forced to leave after Chávez officials tried to remove my
parliamentary immunity by fabricating allegations of my involvement in a
U.S.-backed conspiracy.

Now Mr. Maduro, whom I knew well in parliament as a more conciliatory
figure, is rapidly accelerating the late president's economic and social
policies to their deadliest conclusion.

This is happening because Mr. Maduro, who served as Chávez's foreign
minister from 2006-13, has ties with Cuba's ruling Communists that
stretch back to the 1980s, when he trained in Havana as a labor-union
organizer. Having entered Chávez's trusted circle with the support of
the Cubans, Mr. Maduro emerged as Chávez's handpicked successor and came
to power in April, defeating the opposition candidate, Henrique
Capriles, by a razor thin margin of 1.5%. Despite thousands of
allegations of voter fraud, the regime refused a recount.

Seven months later, the responsibility for Venezuela's present crisis
lies squarely with Mr. Maduro. According to his government's own
figures, inflation currently stands at 54%, the highest in the Americas.
Much as Chávez did, Mr. Maduro has plundered Venezuela's oil industry,
which accounts for 95% of export earnings, by providing billions of
dollars in oil subsidies to Cuba and other regime allies. Despite the
regime's much trumpeted commitment to wealth redistribution, the country
is plagued by shortages of basic goods like cooking oil, milk and corn
flour, while concerns over a government debt default have led Standard &
Poor's to downgrade the country's credit rating to B-. Amid the
deepening misery, barely a week goes by without some fresh conspiracy
charge leveled at the United States.

To understand where Venezuela is headed, look to Zimbabwe. Like
Venezuela, which sits atop the world's largest oil reserves, Zimbabwe is
rich in natural resources including minerals, diamonds and platinum. And
like Venezuela under Chávez and Mr. Maduro, Zimbabwe has been ruined by
the 33-year dictatorship of Robert Mugabe.

Mr. Maduro is now busily borrowing from Mugabe's playbook. In November,
he forced an Enabling Act through the National Assembly that permits him
to rule by decree, giving him the power to arrest anyone deemed to
threaten the "security and defense of the nation."

He has also declared war on private property rights. Hundreds of
businessmen have been detained in recent weeks on vague charges of
"usury" and "speculation." Dozens of businesses have been forcibly
nationalized to prevent them from pricing goods at the black-market rate
for U.S. dollars, currently 10 times the official rate.

All this is disturbingly reminiscent of 2007 in Zimbabwe, when Mugabe
launched "Operation Reduce Prices," a political witch-hunt which
asserted that private businesses were behind the country's economic
woes. Under the gaze of the police and the army, crowds looted
electronics stores in downtown Harare, in a similar manner to the
Venezuelans who ransacked Daka Electronics stores last month. These
actions only exacerbated Zimbabwe's grave financial crisis, and we can
expect the same outcome in Venezuela.

Land seizures, another hallmark of the Mugabe regime, are now a feature
of Venezuelan politics as well. Since 2000, more than 4,000 commercial
farmers in Zimbabwe have been dispossessed. In Venezuela, according to a
recent report by Antonio Canova, a prominent Caracas lawyer, more than
2,300 properties were seized by Chávez between 2000 and 2010. Mr. Maduro
is building on this shameful record, by relying on a law which states
that anyone unable to produce title deeds dating to the earliest
records—which would include the vast majority of property-holders—is
liable to have their property seized.

Against this backdrop, the opposition wanted the municipal elections to
be a national referendum on Mr. Maduro's government. By issuing a decree
that slashed the prices of plasma screen TVs and other consumer goods,
Mr. Maduro pulled off a last-minute electoral boost.

Like Mugabe, who retained power in elections in 2008 and 2013 that were
widely slammed as fraudulent, Mr. Maduro now rules with virtually no
checks on his actions. However, as Mr. Capriles has pointed out, the
municipal elections have left Venezuelans split dangerously down the
middle. With Mr. Maduro committed to the struggle against those he calls
"bourgeois parasites," the crisis can only deepen over the short-term.

Mr. Martinez, an opposition member of the Venezuelan National Assembly
from 2000-05, is the CEO of the Center for Democracy and Development in
the Americas in Washington, D.C.

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