Dictatorship control on all,
The Economist:
Maduro’s muzzle
Not content with harassing the press, the regime censors itself
Under Nicolás Maduro, who succeeded Chávez as president in 2013, the government is supplementing its relentless propaganda with self-censorship. The apparent goal is to hide from Venezuelans bad news that might weaken their already shaky faith in the regime. The health ministry, for instance, has not published a weekly epidemiological bulletin since early November, despite concurrent outbreaks of three mosquito-borne diseases. Last May Venezuela saw its first cases of chikungunya, a disease originating in Africa, which causes very high fevers and severe joint pains. It took the authorities five months to declare chikungunya a notifiable disease. The most recent bulletin still fails to include it.
…
Self-censorship is not confined to the health authorities. The National Statistical Institute (INE) has not published poverty data for 2014. No one has provided production figures for PDVSA, the state oil corporation, for the past three months. When officials explain their silence, which is not often, they talk of a need to avoid “political manipulation” of statistics.
Not that this should come as a surprise to long-term readers of this blog: For years I have mentioned that
The International Monetary Fund keeps a List of IMF Member Countries with Delays in Completion of Article IV Consultations or Mandatory Financial Stability Assessments Over 18 Months. As of the writing of this post, Venezuela hasn’t held an Article IV consultation with the IMF in 99 months.
Let me translate that into plain English: The Venezuelan government has not allowed its own numbers to be verified for almost a decade.
It also stopped reporting a number of standard indicators several years ago
About the only thing that’s new is Nicolas Maduro’s latest conspiracy theory.
By the way, why is Venezuela still considered a hybrid regime?
States that fit the hybrid regime profile can be identified based on the following characteristics:
– elections which are not too flawed and which have the potential to make a difference;
– significant levels of corruption, particularly in the judicial and electoral arenas;
– a lack of vital components of democratic quality, such as checks and balances and government accountability;
– a problematic press freedom situation, typically including incumbents’ desire to control the media, particularly television;
– a poor civil liberties situation, including limits on freedom of expression and the freedom to form organisations and trade unions; and
– a problematic rule of law situation, including a lack of judicial independence.
The elections were rigged.
Carlos Rangel posts on Muzzling a country
Following last week’s VII Summit of the Americas, the hemisphere media showed an endless parade of Cuba propagandists touting “Cuba’s moral victory” over the U.S.
