Those of us who observed Venezuela for years noticed a really large increase in corruption when Chavez was president. This caused a lot of dissatisfaction and hurt the economy, but Chavez had his baloney and charisma, and could use petrodollars and borrow money to keep enough people happy and thus stay in power.
But as Chavez entered his final months the petrodollars started drying up....this was caused by a slight drop in production, lower oil quality, and the need to repay the Chinese for the $40 billion they had borrowed in the Fondo Chino. At the same time Maduro saw himself replacing Chavez, and everybody knows he wasn't ready for the job...his main campaign spiel was he was Chavez' son, that he received supernatural messages from Chavez, and blah blah.
But because Chavez had left a host of problems behind, including high crime, corruption, food scarcity, electricity problems, a lousy economy with high inflation and lack of national production, Maduro eventually realized he had to start fixing the problems Chavez left behind. The government eventually devalued the currency, increased controlled prices 20 %, created a secondary exchange market (which failed), rolled out the army to try to control crime in the worst areas, and now he's moving to arrest a few corrupt officials.
But these corrupt officials were all Chavistas. Everybody knew they were making a lot of money. And they were untouchable. That Seniat official didn't buy a deluxe apartment in Caracas yesterday. Chavista officials have been seen to be purchasing $300 thousand apartments cash up front. From what? Five years ago they were making minimum wage and then got "made" into the chavista mafia, and then they start buying apartments and driving hummers and flying to Miami, and their wives buy Gucci bags and throw huge parties...and this is why Capriles got almost 50 % of the vote.
So now Maduro (or I should say Arreaza because Maduro spends his time wearing funny hats and on tour), is going after a few corrupt officials...but they are still headed towards a 40 % inflation level, they still lack national production, they are not fixing the currency exchange market, and they are not going to get themselves out of this hole selling out to Chevron, Rosneft and the other multinationals. Can't keep on borrowing and mortgaging the oil fields because that's just selling out the country. As for Chavez' legacy, it's built on shifting sands. A lot of propaganda and carnival paper mâché. But underneath an unsustainable economy headed down the drain.
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