Hablar, hablar, habla demasiado

Carlos Blanco sees the symptoms (in Venezuela);

WHERE ARE YOU, FREEDOM? There are undoubtedly people that are happy, which results in a foreseeable election impact. Carrying a TV set on one's back, free of charge or at half the price, does not make anybody unhappy. Receiving an allowance without moving a hand, except to take the money, may be a reason for joy. There are also people who believe that a bad life is better endured if the others are also ruined, or those who think that problems are alien to them and that after all their momentary suffering, a calm of sorts will come, with children passionately reading Fidel Castro's heroic deed; fat peasant women waging the sickle, while joyfully picking up illusions with their hands; and hefty workers in the gratifying effort of manufacturing socialism with the emblematic hammer, blowing down stubborn bourgeois little heads. All in an attempt to hide sugar shortages, the high price of the hypertension medicine and the young boy's body lying on the street because he, distracted, got trapped in the middle of the shooting.

But, if it's only 'A time to talk.', then it's going to be a verrrry long time before they find freedom (and concomitant prosperity). Blanco provides his own clue in his opinion piece;

But Nicolás [Maduro] is not Chávez. Nicolás rather appears to have been chosen because he was the weakest of the possible successors and, undoubtedly, as a way to stop Diosdado Cabello, the lieutenant swollen by ambition and resentment, as revealed by his grunts and imprecations. Nicolás is trying to conceal his weakness as a successor and his lack of leadership with his arrogance, insolence and merciless and brutal attacks against his opponents. Maduro attacks so brutally not because he is strong, but because he is weak; because he knows he is cornered and swats as he always does. He lacks legitimacy, legality, consistency and sense of State; he rather has become a dangerous loudmouth; the bully boy who needs to fake a courage that he only has when he is accompanied by his gang.