Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (L) blows a kiss to supporters next to his wife First Lady Cilia Flores during a May Day rally in Caracas May 1, 2013. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
“Uribe is behind a plot to kill me,” Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro said Friday in a televised speech. ”Uribe is a killer. I have enough evidence of who is conspiring, and there are sectors of the Venezuelan right that are involved.” The union leader and former bus driver picked by Hugo Chávez to carry on his Socialist legacy was referring, in this case, to conservative former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. But the way he’s been talking lately, the specifics are almost besides the point.
As Maduro continues to stare down a raging opposition movement convinced he stole last month’s election, he has taken to regularly making use of a tactic deployed skilfully by his predecessor: the alleged discovery of conspiracies deadly to him and dangerous to the state. The Uribe affair is just the latest in a series of what are probably best described as conspiracy theories from the embattled pol, who claimed earlier this year that a right-wing Salvadoran congressman planned to murder him, accused “imperialist” assassins of infecting Chávez with illness as he lay on his deathbed, and — breaking from the norm a bit - charged American conservatives with a more complex scheme to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles in hopes of sparking a coup against the government.
The apple does not fall far from the tree here, and Maduro has no qualms about spreading fear of foreign interlocutors. On the contrary, he has plainly calculated that it’s best to gin up outrage against meddling capitalists from abroad rather than focus on the painfully narrow margin of his win over Capriles (not to mention the host of actual issues facing the government). Unlike Chávez, though, Maduro is showing little restraint in the rapidity of his outrageous claims. Also unlike Chávez: he has never actually faced a military coup (which the former president did in 2002). He may be overplaying his hand by tapping a convenient foil too often so early his term; we’re only a few weeks in! High time, despite that, to start a tally of Maduro’s alleged conspiracies and to note that a real coup attempt (or at least one he could provide some evidence for) might be of benefit to the beleagured president. After all, Chavez faced genuine threats to his rule as early as 1999, according to local media, when a bloodless coup was rumored by generals and veterans of the November 1992 effort that followed Chavez’s own failed attempt earlier that year. The sooner Maduro can produce the goods, the better.
