Common crime as a conspiracy by the opposition

As commented in the previous post, the government has been recently trying to link Venezuela’s high crime rates to a plot by the opposition to supposedly destabilize the country. The government claims that common crime should not be understood as “common” at all, but as the result of paramilitaries acting in cahoots with the local opposition and its foreign allies with the aim of destabilizing the country. Interior Minister Gustavo González López calls this the “political use of criminal gangs.”

Yesterday President Nicolas Maduro also announced that he has “evidence of the articulation of the main leaders of the Venezuelan and Colombian far-right with criminal gangs, which they hire and pay with drugs and dollars to selectively murder citizens in the streets, and thus sow chaos in the country.”

Maduro did not give details about the evidence supporting his or González López’s claims, but called this plot a “second front of attack”, closely linked to the “first front” which is the economic war he claims is being waged against the country:

“The second front of attack is organized crime, paid with the drugs and the money of the Colombian right and ultra-right. I thus denounce it here!” further explained Maduro.