Venezuela’s regime is in a scared and ugly mood

VENEZUELA’S president, Nicolás Maduro, admits that a parliamentary election on December 6th “could be the most difficult” test the government has faced since Hugo Chávez, his mentor, came to power following an election in 1998. Mr Maduro, like Chávez, claims to be leading an “anti-imperialist” revolution. Yet his legitimacy derives purely from the ballot box. Chávez’s popularity was boosted by an oil windfall, which he showered on Venezuela’s previously neglected poor. This helped him win a further three elections, by wide margins, before his death from cancer in 2013. Shortly afterwards Mr Maduro won by just 1.5 percentage points a presidential election that the opposition denounced as fraudulent. More…