Riding the storms: Venezuela’s ‘indestructible’ Nicolas Maduro
Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has been written off many times during a turbulent decade in power. But the former bus driver and anointed heir of Hugo Chavez has stubbornly clung to the wheel.
With neither the charisma, popularity, nor flush oil revenues of his late revolutionary mentor, Maduro is accused by rights groups of embracing fullblown authoritarianism to remain in power.
There had been little suspense in the run-up to Saturday’s announcement that he will be the ruling PSUV party’s candidate in July 28 presidential elections.
The 61-year-old will be seeking a third consecutive six-year term with his political opposition all but kneecapped.
Tall, and sporting an abundant mustache and slicked-back greying hair, Maduro was thrust into power as the handpicked successor of Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013.
Struggling to gain respect as the legitimate successor to still-popular Chavez, Maduro won his first election with a razorthin margin.
Since then, he has fended off crisis after crisis, ruling with an increasingly iron fist and consolidating power even as life for the
average Venezuelan grew ever more miserable.
Millions of Venezuelans have fled a dire economic crisis, marked by runaway inflation and critical shortages, as an oil boom went bust partly due to a plunge in global crude prices.
Baseball and salsa
Born in Caracas and a professed Marxist and Christian, Maduro as a teenager played guitar in a rock band called Enigma. He is a baseball fan and dances salsa.
He became a union leader for workers on the Caracas metro and went to communist Cuba in the 1980s to be educated.
Elected to the National Assembly when Chavez swept to power, he rose to become speaker of the legislature before taking over as foreign minister in 2006 and then vice president in October 2012.
In December of that year,
Chavez officially declared Maduro his successor before travelling to Cuba for cancer treatment.
He died three months later and Maduro took over, much to the surprise of even some in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
It was not the first nor last time Maduro was underestimated. In fact, he has embraced criticism that he is boorish and provincial to try and cast himself as a “worker president.”
It has even been claimed that he deliberately misspeaks in English so as not to be mistaken for high-brow.
‘At war with imperialism’
As president, Maduro has weathered many threats imagined and real -- including a failed explosive-laden drone attack in 2018 that injured several soldiers.
Activists say his government has clamped down ruthlessly on protests against his harsh rule and economic misery.
He has even faced down sanctions that followed the nonrecognition of his reelection in 2018 by dozen of nations that declared parliamentary president Juan Guaido Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
As Maduro focused on tightening control over the judiciary, legislature, military and other institutions, Guaido’s rival government collapsed by itself.