The revolution eating its has-beens
Juan Cristóbal says: – The Bolivarian Revolution has been making some strange moves regarding corruption as of late. A few weeks ago, we learned that former Finance Minister Tobías Nóbrega (sort of like a chavista Bernie Madoff) had been indicted for corruption. Today we learned that retired general Victor Cruz Weffer, a loyal chavista pawn in the early days of the Revolution (remember the Plan Bolívar 2000?) had also been indicted.
What can we make of this? To the untrained eye, it would appear as though chavismo is trying to get its act together by going after corruption within its own ranks. But that is a shallow reading of these cases, since both men have been separated from the inner workings of the government for years now.
When reading these kinds of news, one has to weigh them against the other evidence, which points to chavismo’s propensity to actually promote some of its most notorious crooks. After all, today we learned that Diosdado Cabello actually heads 31 different state offices, with my buddy Armando Briquet calling him a “latifundista gubernamental.” Henry Rangel Silva, former Intelligence chief and a man heavily involved in Maletagate, was recently promoted to *gulp* president of CANTV, the state-owned telecom conglomerate. And Rafael Ramírez and his family appear to be consolidating more and more power by the day.
So while chavismo goes after its has-beens, crooks with actual power on their hands appear to be doing just fine, thank you.
Post 77 of 100 … and that painting of Cronos grosses me out every time I see it …
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