Page 12 - ARUBA TODAY

A12 WORLD NEWS
Saturday 8 September 2018

Venezuela merchants face arrest for defying Maduro’s reforms

By JOSHUA GOODMAN built a chain of three stores.
Associated Press Over the years the fam-
SANTA TERESA DEL TUY, ily business survived riots,
Venezuela (AP) — Frank- a banking crisis and more
lin David was arrested last recently a shortage of im-
week in this impoverished ports that depleted inven-
town outside Caracas for tories by half. The day Da-
doing what his family says vid was arraigned was the
he has done almost every 15th anniversary of his fa-
day for the past 25 years: ther’s murder in a botched
selling car parts. carjacking.
In a surprise raid, about But David David, co-owner
two dozen armed police of the business, said that
officers flanked by Santa with his brother locked up,
Teresa del Tuy’s mayor he doesn’t know how he’ll
and journalists showed up survive the potent mix of
at David’s four-story ware- hyperinflation and ironclad
house, Autopartes Guarico controls.
2000, and hauled away the For the first time, he’s seri-
49-year-old father of three ously considering perma-
for allegedly raising prices nently closing shop and
by too much in a country joining the exodus of 2.3
ravaged by hyperinflation. million Venezuelans who
His already-struggling busi- have fled the country in re-
ness, built from scratch dur- cent years. The only thing
ing a more prosperous era, In this Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018 photo, David David points at a photo of his brother Franklin David, stopping him is the sup-
was shut down and David during an interview in his office in Santa Teresa Del Tuy, Venezuela. port of loyal employees he
remains jailed on charges Associated Press says are family and who
of speculation, a crime from economic advisers to government to print boli- eral banks who attended this week took the unusual
punishable with up to 10 former Ecuadorian Presi- vars with abandon, further meetings in June with Vice step of holding a small pro-
years in prison. dent Rafael Correa, the stoking inflation forecast to President Tareck El Aissami test outside their shuttered
“It was like they were cel- plan consisted of some reach 1 million percent, ac- to suggest ways out of Ven- workplace with signs that
ebrating a triumph,” said measures that Wall Street cording to the International ezuela’s economic mess. read “Free Franklin” and
Julio Pernia, one of 20 em- had been urging for years, Monetary Fund. He believes that Venezu- “Let us work!”
ployees who have no idea like hiking give-away gas In August, as a new cur- ela’s biggest problem re- According to a police re-
how they’ll feed their fami- prices to close a yawning rency with five fewer zeros mains the price-setting port obtained by The As-
lies now that their boss is budget deficit and dis- was being rolled out, prices power of its anti-govern- sociated Press, a manager
behind bars “They treated mantling currency controls jumped a whopping 223 ment elite, which for years for the Miranda state gov-
us like killers but all we were in place since 2003. Some percent, according to a re- profited from access to ernment visited the shop
doing was our work.” opponents even accused port by the opposition-con- the illegal currency mar- on Aug. 27 and asked for
David’s plight is shared to Maduro of imposing a neo- trolled National Assembly. kets and almost free pub- the price of a small engine
some extent by thousands liberal blueprint — the ul- The central bank stopped lic utilities even as inflation part for a Toyota Tacoma
of small business owners timate insult in a country regularly publishing infla- slashed the wages of the pick-up. When he returned
nationwide — a few dozen where hundreds were killed tion data in 2004. working class in dollar terms a week later, the price had
who have been arrested during days of looting the “To dismantle this requires to the lowest level in Latin jumped almost five-fold, to
and far more who fear last time economic auster- dismantling the clientele America. 13,000 Bolivars, or about
having to choose between ity was seriously attempted base of Chavismo with all “There’s no increase in the $210 at the new official ex-
closing shop or hitting cus- in 1989. “We now have to the obstacles fueled by cost structure that justifies change rate. As part of the
tomers with steep price in- play another way, with ideology, populism and such brutal increases in reform package, Maduro
creases as they adapt to Prussian fiscal discipline to corruption,” said Orlando prices,” said Paez. devalued the official rate
President Nicolas Maduro’s definitively eliminate the Ochoa, an Oxford Univer- But that’s hardly comfort- by 95 percent.
sweeping plan to rescue printing of non-organic sity-trained economist who ing to small businesses. David David disputes the
the crisis-wracked econ- money and sustain the cre- has been working the past Nationwide more than 130 allegations in the com-
omy. The plan imposes a ation of wealth through oil two years with Venezuela’s merchants have been ar- plaint, but acknowledges
more-than-3,000 percent production, tourism and opposition on an econom- rested since the measures that he had no choice to
increase to the minimum more-efficient collection of ic transition plan. “Asking were announced, accord- raise prices of his entire in-
wage while maintaining taxes,” Maduro said in an- Maduro to come up with ing to the chief prosecu- ventory by an average of
laws that threaten prison for nouncing the reforms. He a complex recovery plan is tor’s office. They include 30 percent to absorb part
storeowners who raise their also encouraged support- like asking him to undertake store managers of the na- of the higher costs for im-
prices in excess of what ers to be vigilant against a human mission to Mars.” tion’s biggest pharmacy ports and now a 60-fold
state regulators determine. price-gouging and de- But government backers chain and at least two increase in wages. He says
Even so — despite the nounce merchants who blame U.S. financial sanc- others — a Chinese grocer he didn’t hike them more
heavy-handed crackdown raise prices “excessively.” tions and what Maduro and a butcher — in Santa for fear it would’ve dried up
that trapped businesses like But most economists view calls an “economic war” Teresa del Tuy. the trickle of business he still
David’s — the reforms an- the plan as half-baked and by his opponents. Like many small business has. In any case, auto parts
nounced three weeks ago ill-suited for a nation sitting Pedro Paez, a former anti- owners in Venezuela, the have never been subject
represent the most serious atop the world’s largest trust regulator in Ecuador, David family had become to price caps like food and
bow to market forces in two petroleum reserves. They was among several officials adroit at averting disaster. medicine, leaving him to
decades of socialist rule. argue that the minimum linked to the leftist Cor- The business was started in wonder what his apolitical
Developed in secret over wage hike will bankrupt rea as well as experts from 1991 by David’s father, a family did to deserve such
several months with input businesses and require the Russia, China and multilat- mechanic who gradually treatment.q