Caracas Chronicles

Honestly, I can’t follow all the ins and outs of Supreme Tribunal Magistrate Luis Velasquez Alvaray’s defenestration saga, but some of the crap coming out is really eye-popping.

The Interior Minister tells us the guy who used to be in charge of the entire court system (as head of the Executive Directorate of the Magistrature) was “stewing” (guisando) with some shady construction contracts for new courthouses. Going on the counteroffensive, the guy who used to run the entire court system tells us Military Intelligence is run by drug traffikers (!) backed by Caracas-circuit drug-baron midget judges (I wish I was making this up) protected by Jose Vicente Rangel. He says the Interior Minister’s banker brother has been accused again and again of abusing his political connections to land lucrative contracts. He helpfully suggests bombing Caracas’s main court building as a means of judicial prophylaxis(!!!!!).

I have no idea who’s telling the truth here – though it does look more or less like a fight about integrity between Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone, so it wouldn’t precisely shock me if all the allegations are true.

Just one note: if a tenth of the charges flying around Velasquez Alvaray are true, this web of scandals is 10 times worse than the PT bribes scandal in Brazil. But are there any consequences? Is there any sense of crisis? Political fallout? None at all…ah, the joys of autocracy.