Devaluing the Bolivarian revolution

AFTER months of opposition protests that it portrays as a “fascist coup”, the government of Nicolás Maduro has reason for grim satisfaction. Using crude, but selective, repression, Mr Maduro has fought the protesters to a state of exhaustion. More than 40 people have been killed. The leaders of the opposition’s radical wing are either in jail or have been deprived of a public platform. The president has made none of the concessions the opposition seeks—the freeing of political prisoners and the restoration of bipartisanship to the media, the electoral authority and the courts.

So confident is the regime of its political grip that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela plans to hold a congress next month at which Mr Maduro is likely to be installed as its head—a post still formally held by the late Hugo Chávez, who was also Venezuela’s president until his death in 2013. But the problems of Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution” are far from over. A survey published last month by Datanálisis, a respected pollster, found that Mr Maduro’s approval rating had fallen to 37% (from 52% in December) and that four out of five respondents thought the country’s situation was “bad”.