Victory over economic war near

Victory is in sight, announced president Maduro yesterday: “With the maximum military-civic union and the mobilization of the People, rooted in socialism, the basis will be consolidated for the defeat within the next four month of the economic war waged by the right wing with the aim of destabilizing the country, through hoarding, speculation, and smuggling of basic products,” he announced according to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.

“The oligarchy is betting on breaking our fatherland by way of the economic war, by disillusioning the people, demoralizing it,” explained Maduro.

The new offensive will include a propaganda push because, said Maduro, “we need an educated people, cultivated, with a high degree of consciousness, [with] a new human spirituality.”

On a more concrete level, Maduro announced that final victory in the economic war will be achieved by strengthening State controls over the economy, specifically by more closely controlling the fixed prices of basic products. Maduro complained that his enemies are now using the SIMADI dollar, one of the several exchange rates fixed by the government, as a benchmark for stablishing prices, instead of the lowest official rate: “they twisted [the currency controls] with their evilness, as the scammers they actually are. They are taking the people’s money from their pockets. Parasite capitalism is taking the money from the Venezuelan people’s pockets.”

Maduro will therefore stablish a new “scheme which will allow us to consolidate new modalities for the establishment of just prices and for the fixing, control and compliance of compulsory just prices in the country.”