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Venezuela Faces Uncertain Future As 'Failing State' Enters Second Year Of Economic Crisis

By Jesselyn Cook

In an interview with The Huffington Post, AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth discusses new and familiar challenges Venezuelans could face in 2017.

Amid widespread poverty, worsening food shortages and tumbling oil prices, socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has declared a sixth consecutive 60-day period of national economic emergency, stretching the crisis into a second year and further extending his government’s expansive decree powers.

Blaming the nation’s financial woes on low oil prices and a U.S.-led plot to topple his regime, the embattled leader announced Sunday that his administration would soon unveil a new plan to address Venezuela’s crippling recession and hyperinflation.

A former bus driver and union leader, Maduro was narrowly elected to lead the country in April 2013 following the death of former President Hugo Chávez one month prior….

If Maduro had lost in a referendum held before Jan. 10, a new presidential election would have been called, giving the opposition and its supporters the opportunity to potentially end nearly 18 years of socialist rule in Venezuela. His loss in a referendum held after that date would simply result in power shifting to Vice President Tareck El Assami, who Maduro appointed earlier this month.

The WorldPost spoke with foreign policy expert Eric Farnsworth, Vice President of Council of the Americas, about Venezuela’s political and economic future.

What power does Venezuela’s opposition-majority Congress have to actually effect political change on the Maduro administration at this point?

They’ve been trying to engage in a dialogue with the government now for about six months, facilitated by the Vatican, and other leaders from South America. Dialogue doesn’t seem to be getting the opposition anywhere. Indeed what’s happening is the government is becoming even more radicalized and less responsive to any sort of opposition requests. 

The questions is, what’s the alternative? The election process would normally be the escape valve for this sort of scenario, except for the fact that the opposition ― which wanted, and indeed worked for, a recall referendum in 2016 ― was stymied by the government. The recall referendum is completely constitutional, in fact, when President Chávez was alive, he had a recall referendum and he won. But this government didn’t think it was going to win, so it did what it could to kill it....

Read the full article here.

 

 

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