Some questions on Time Magazine naming Nicolás Maduro as one of the 100 most influential
"Last year, as Nicolás Maduro ran for the Venezuelan presidency, he received a visitor from the beyond. He was praying in a chapel when a bird flew in, circled him three times and began to whistle. Maduro said he felt the spirit of the late Hugo Chávez, his mentor and former President, who had come to bless his bid for high office.
The Maduro campaign frequently invoked Chávez during the contest, and perhaps it helped. Maduro won — but only just, and not without the opposition alleging electoral irregularities. A year on, lacking Chávez’s firm grip on power, Maduro is struggling as a litany of ills, from soaring inflation to food shortages, fans popular discontent. All this in a country that many in the region trade with or depend on for cheap oil. Whether it collapses now depends on Maduro — and on whether he can step out of the shadow of his pugnacious predecessor and compromise with his opponents."
Some questions:
From the description above should Time not have included the bird that whistled or the spirit of Chávez instead of Maduro?
How can one name as "influential" one who cannot convince his own people to pay more than US$ 1 cent per gallon of gas? Allowing the price of milk, when it is to be found, to be 278 times the price of gas?
Could the being able to convince by sheer use of force a criteria to make into this list of influential?
How come TIME magazine, knowing how split Venezuela is, can take a side like this in favor of the regime? Intellectual or vanilla corruption?
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