Military in middle of battle of wills in Venezuela

Nothing is going quite right for Venezuela nowadays. Then again, it can be persuasively argued that little was going right for South America’s embattled oil-production leader even before the 2013 death of the larger-than-life and (mostly) revered Hugo Chávez.

And now his hand-chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro, bedeviled almost from day one of his presidency by a tanking economy and an opposition obsessed with booting him from office, seems hell-bent on forcing a showdown that could determine the nation’s immediate and long-term future.

With the currency in shambles, rolling blackouts adding to the citizenry’s daily dose of misery and the oil industry maddeningly slow to recover, Maduro declared on Saturday a 60-day state of emergency, broadening his and the military’s powers in the face of alleged plots by the United States and OPEC to destabilize his regime.

The sweeping order drew an immediate and sound rejection from critics, with opposition leader and perennial presidential candidate Henrique Capriles going so far as to appeal directly to the military to choose whether it will stand “with the constitution or with [Maduro].”

Capriles was quick to deny that his reaction was meant as prelude to a coup, but his words hissed contempt. And when Maduro declared that the National Assembly, which rejected his emergency dictate, has lost all validity and that it’s just “a matter of time before it disappears,” Capriles countered that Maduro had better get the “tanks and [military] jets ready,” foreseeing a quick exit in the president’s future.

Not since the uncertainty and turmoil preceding Chávez’s death has Venezuela appeared this close to plunging into civil war. In 2014 and ’15, Maduro brutally stamped out massive anti-government demonstrations. And when the opposition won a majority of the National Assembly seats in the elections of December 2015, its biggest legislative success under 17 years of socialist rule, Maduro blunted the heartily welcomed “victory for the people” with a series of moves aimed at creating and maintaining congressional gridlock.

Now, it looks like the opposition, while still claiming to prefer a constitutionally approved mechanism for removing Maduro, is finally taking the gloves off. Question is: Will Venezuela, its vaunted experiment with socialism all but over, really be better off under military rule? Historically, Latin American countries are certainly no strangers to military dictatorships, but few, if any, can honestly say they’re better off as a result.