Socialist Dictator of Starving Country Vows to Repress Opposition Even Harder

Venezuela, a country with oil wealth and a Socialist dictator, has food riots. The left lost the last election. But it just rigged the court system and is now operating as a brutal dictatorship with big plans.

In a replay of one of the ugliest chapters in the two-decade rule of the socialist party in Venezuela, a top government official said Thursday that a list of those who signed a petition seeking to recall President Nicolas Maduro will be handed over to government ministries and state-run companies.

"In a revolution, revolutionaries must be in charge of state institutions, not political opponents," Diosdado Cabello, a top official in the ruling Socialist Party and a lawmaker, said at a rally. "This is not a violation of the right to work."

Funny how "revolutionaries" became the repressive government busy putting down a revolution.

Cabello has made similar threats earlier this year, but Thursday's comments brought back memories of the so-called Tascon List which was used by the government under then President Hugo Chavez to fire state workers and bar others from everything from jobs to loans for having signed a petition for a recall referendum in 2004 that Chavez eventually survived. The list was compiled by then lawmaker Luis Tascon and electronic versions of the list circulated throughout Venezuela even being sold by sidewalk vendors. Some Venezuelans even attempted to pay officials to be removed from the list.

A former army captain, Cabello aided Chavez launch a failed coup in 1992 that would eventually help propel the late socialist leader to the presidency.

And Maduro is promising purges and more purges.

Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro warned the opposition asking for his recall that he is “prepared” to outperform Turkey’s Recep Erdogan when it comes to violent repression.

“If the opposition crosses the line, they will find out that Erdogan is a nursing infant next to me and I don’t give a damn about what the OAS says,” Maduro said during a live televised speech.

Also on Thursday, two journalists were detained and released after five hours for taking pictures of what authorities are now calling “the Presidential Corridor”: A portion of Caracas’ Sucre avenue that leads to the Miraflores Presidential Palace.

The opposition has called for a nationwide march on September 1st, asking that the recall against Maduro moves forward more rapidly, setting the stage for an almost certain confrontation between the anti-Maduro forces and the “colectivos”, a paramilitary faction of chavismo that uses handguns and motorcycles to enforce chavista rule in Venezuela.

Maduro riffed on the Erdogan theme for several minutes: “Let’s hope the right wing does not make that mistake, Erdogan is just wearing diapers, where I am already prepared,” he said. 

Maduro might want to learn from Mussolini instead.