Maduro seeks a boost before the elections with the reactivation of the battered Venezuelan economy

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, seeking a boost before the questioned legislative elections called for December 6, this week ordered the partial reactivation of the devastated economy to encourage consumption.

The confinement in the South American country, where more than 60% of the population lives every day, has been a mirage.

But from now on there will be a formal reactivation.

The Chavista leader decreed the opening of hotels, clubs, inns, spas, parks, restaurants, banks, jewelers, pawn shops, florists, nurseries, perfumeries and liquor stores, among other activities.

The commercial sector was already hit by rampant hyperinflation and economic contraction.

This year, moreover, exacerbating utility failures and fuel shortages have brought it to the brink of collapse.

Maduro also ordered the reactivation of some public entities such as services, registries, traffic and identity windows.

The announcement produced crowds at various offices.

Since Monday, lines of people have gathered to try to process the identity card, a document that had not been issued since before the pandemic due to a shortage of supplies.

The activation was ordered by Maduro himself weeks before the parliamentary elections.

At one of the offices in Caracas, Federico Melchert, 45, stood in line for nine hours and was unable to obtain the document.

"The power went out and then the system went down," he says.

Only those who had lost their identity card or had it expired could do the procedure.

"Of course there was never any distancing and it seems that nobody cared," he says.

In Venezuela, the identity card is required in some businesses to pay and it is essential for bank procedures, such as the collection of the bonus received by more than four million pensioners.

It is also the basic requirement to vote.

The Chavista leader has focused all his political strategy on the parliamentary elections on December 6, questioned by the opposition and the European Union, for which it has also been necessary to put this simulacrum normality into operation.

The appointment is key for Maduro to get the counter-power of the National Assembly controlled by forces critical of Chavismo out of the game at once.

To do this, he tried to convene the electoral observation of Brussels in search of legitimacy from the international community while his adversaries weaken after serving almost two years of attempts to force a political transition.

Maduro also approved an anti-blockade law, which gives him more powers to manage the nation's resources and go through the last quarter of the year dry in income due to the collapse of the national oil industry and the economic sanctions imposed by Washington.

In addition, the head of state decreed the early start of Christmas, paid a first part of the Christmas bonuses to public employees and promised, as every year, to deliver pork pieces.

In Europe and other Latin American countries, second and third waves of infections are beginning to experience.

But for Maduro the page of the covid-19 seems to be past.

Venezuela has not yet reached 100,000 cases and accumulates 741 deaths.

However, these are the indicators of a country that has followed the epidemic blindly.

With only two laboratories enabled to carry out molecular tests, both in the capital, the diagnostic capacity is one of the most limited in the region.

Venezuela is the country that tests the least for COVID-19 and the results can take between 15 days and a month.

The number of PCR tests performed is a secret, this being a basic indicator that epidemiologists use to monitor the evolution of the pandemic.

According to mathematical models from the National Academy of Sciences published in September, the epidemic was entering its expansion phase at that time, with a projection for December of 14,000 daily cases.