5/11/2023 0 Comments Use plutocracy in a sentence![]() Other instances of the kleptocrats’ audacity abound. Which makes this not just the story of another drug-trafficking operation, but rather a glimpse into the activities of an alliance of kleptocratic governments. Obviously, an operation of this magnitude, regularity and impunity requires the complicity of high-level officials in at least three countries. In this case, however, they were not diplomatic pouches but rather enormous bundles containing 500 kilos of cocaine. ![]() Rocha says that every week he flew an Air Force plane from La Paz, Bolivia to Caracas, Venezuela and Havana, Cuba carrying sealed “diplomatic pouches” that were delivered to the plane by the Venezuelan embassy’s military attachés in La Paz. Coutinho gathered the testimony of a Bolivia Air Force pilot named Marco Antonio Rocha who was involved in the trafficking of large volumes of cocaine from Bolivia to Venezuela and Cuba. In a kleptocracy criminal behavior is collective, systematic, strategic, and permanentĪn example that illustrates the outrageous conduct of kleptocratic governments was recently revealed by the respected Brazilian journalist Leonardo Coutinho. When the two coincide, the kleptocracy and the kakistocracy feed back on each other. Obviously, sometimes they they come together producing a government that is both criminal and incompetent. Kakistocracies (literally, governments by the worst) proliferate in weak and disorganized political systems that repel the talented and attract the inept and most debased. The case of the inept in power is something different. For the kleptocrats the common good and people’s needs are secondary and only looked at when they are at the service of their primary goal: to fatten their fortunes and make sure they stay in power. It is a system in which all the high-level government officials are complicit, where they deliberately work to enrich themselves, and then use their accumulated wealth to perpetuate themselves in power. No, in a kleptocracy criminal behavior is not individual, opportunistic, or sporadic, but rather collective, systematic, strategic, and permanent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |