The wave of daily protests by teachers and other public sector workers, since the beginning of the year, over $6 a month starvation wages and the message conveyed not only to these protesters, but also to junior officers of the Armed Forces, that there is no money to increase salaries, have led Nicolás Maduro to a new crusade against corruption for political purposes.
The last time was against Rafael Ramírez, former president of PDVSA and former Oil Minister of Hugo Chávez, in 2017. Public ministry He opened a “criminal investigation” for some documents that incriminated him “as a direct partner in oil purchase-sale brokerage operations.” On that occasion, 65 officials of the state oil company were displaced. Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martínez, both former oil ministers and presidents of PDVSA, were arrested.
Maduro’s strategy was to blame Ramírez’s corruption in the oil industry of the inflation cumulative rate of 852.60% in 2017 and the drop in the gross domestic product 56%, compared to 2013.
The economic scenario was adverse for him to face the 2018 presidential election. Therefore, he had to blame another for the economic disaster that the Bolivarian country was going through. The situation was such that the elections that are usually held in December were brought forward to the month of May.
A year ago the vendetta against Ramírez resurfaced because Chávez’s former oil minister decided to face Maduro’s re-election in 2024, establishing clear differences between Chavismo and Madurismo.
At that moment, Tareck el Aissami, Maduro’s Minister of Oil, was the instrument that accused Ramírez of “linking to the most serious irregularities and corruption schemes that occurred in 2012 that compromised the assets of PDVSA.” The “mega theft” would be 4.850 million dollars, according to the also vice president of the regime’s Economy area. Likewise, El Aissami asked the attorney general –the poet of the revolution–, appointed by the Madurista constituent assembly, an exhaustive investigation and the processing of the international arrest warrant against Ramírez.
Maduro used the same modus operandi in the 2013 regional elections.
Supposedly, he had just won the presidential election against Henrique Capriles in April, so the December elections were the litmus test to show that he had won in a fair fight.
That year, the newly proclaimed Maduro faced multiple economic difficulties, such as shortages, high inflation, and the depreciation of the bolivar. The foreign exchange controls applied by his regime made imports difficult. He forced importers to price their goods according to the black market exchange rate, leading to high prices and corruption.
To reverse the possible defeat, Maduro ordered in national chain on radio and television the occupation of the Daka store network by the regime and that all products be put on sale immediately at fair prices: “that there is nothing left on the shelves, that there is nothing left in the warehouses”.
The Dakazo was framed in the narrative of the “economic war”. A story that began to be used with force by spokesmen for the ruling party in August 2013, blaming the private sector and the United States for shortages and inflation.
That was, then, Maduro’s response to “those guilty” of the country’s ills: the usurers and speculators, the enemies who unleashed the “economic war against the people of Venezuela.”
Ten years later, with a presidential election looming, the narrative stands. Corruption is the reason why there is no money to raise wages. The only person responsible for the disappearance of 3,600 million dollars corresponding to a series of oil shipments that left the country without due payment to the state oil company, according to Reuters.
The results of the audit ordered by the new president of PDVSA, Colonel Pedro Tellechea, are used to unveil the complex plot and establish the culprits of the millionaire theft from the state oil company. El Aissami is forced to resign, while they are detained by the Anti-Corruption Police Joselit Ramírez, national superintendent of Cryptoactives; Deputy Hugbel Roa; Colonel Antonio Pérez Suárez and 20 executives from the Trade and Supply Management, in addition to Lieutenant Colonel José Agustín Ramos, Director of Security for the Orinoco Oil Belt.
It is vox populi in the country that what is known as the madurismo mafias participated to different degrees in the looting of PDVSA: Rodríguez, Flores, Maduro Guerra, Camimpet and El Aissami.
So what happened? That now there are no foreign exchange to increase wages and someone has to take the blame. And it will not be Nicolás Maduro as “head of the command line.” They are the “mafias that embedded themselves in PDVSA and Sunacrip”, among others.
On Monday night, he affirmed that the national leadership of the PSUV has assumed a “vertical, frontal, absolute position against corruption”.
Of course, he comes back with the fact that the external enemy is imperialism and the internal one is the fourth republic. “This is a front that makes one indignant, not only enduring the persecution of imperialism, but also having to face the corruption of those who want to indulge in great luxuries, shameless! It is an outrageous front, where we have to join forces and efforts. Have faith and absolute confidence that here you have warriors against corruption and mafias. We have to be poised, standing up, let no one let their guard down in this battle, whoever that fails”.
Maduro needs to rescue the connection with the PSUV bases to face the presidential election. This time he had to give the head of one of his inner circle, because El Aissami is for Maduro what Ramírez was for Chávez. They are complicit in the misdeeds they have done together.
Maduro once again uses the fight against corruption for political purposes.