Almost nobody can with the Bolivarian revolution. This has been demonstrated once again by the prestigious organization Transparency International (TI), by placing Venezuela in fourth place worldwide in its corruption perception index, only barely beaten by South Sudan, Syria and Somalia.
The country with the largest oil reserves on the planet obtained 14 points out of 100, compared to 12 for the Somalis and 13 for Syria and South Sudan. At the head of the global ranking of 180 nations was Denmark, with 90 points, and Uruguay did so in the Latin American section, with 74. The regional average is stagnant at 43 points.
The unstoppable drift of Venezuela is verified when reviewing the ranking so far this century, since in the last 10 years, already with Nicolás Maduro in power, the Creole country has always been at the forefront of the Latino group. And now with almost 30 points less than the continental average.
The Venezuelan chapter of TI has pursued Chavista corruption outside the country until discovering that parliaments and judges from 21 countries have launched 86 investigations of corruption associated with the governments of Maduro and Hugo Chávez.
TI records further confirm that corruption is a hallmark of dictatorships and autocracies. In addition to Venezuela, Nicaragua (19 points) and Haiti (17) share the American podium. The Sandinista revolution of Daniel Ortega and the state of anarchy increased in Haiti since the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 compete by far with Chavismo and are ahead of other countries with populist drifts, such as Honduras (23) and Guatemala (24).
In contrast, the three Latin American countries with the least corruption are precisely the only three full democracies in the region: Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. Corruption is the main factor, together with permanent inequality with the addition of the pandemic, which has caused boredom in societies and the rise of populism in the face of democracy.
“It is no coincidence that regimes like Maduro, Ortega and Putin are so corrupt. It is part of their hegemonic strategy to stay in power. The mafia state is what we see in Venezuela and it is the support of the Maduro regime. It is also The reason why ensuring that giving them more resources (with the withdrawal of sanctions) would improve the quality of life of Venezuelans is an easily removable fallacy,” summarizes the political scientist Walter Molina Galdi.
The great exception in this ranking is precisely the oldest dictatorship on the continent, the Castroite one. TI places Cuba in the American average, with 45 points, although opponents and dissidents are not at all convinced of its virtuality. “There is little access to statistics and in the absence of these, some entities are cautious and simply do not add Cuba to the lists. We are facing an opaque system with a very high level of corruption. Resolve (verb that summarizes a subsistence economy in the one that anything goes, including stealing, looting, fraud…) is structural to the distorted economy of the State”, reveals the historian Armando Chaguaceda for EL MUNDO.
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