"nothing to do with this thread"
Hey, it's the same thing but in a larger scale.
This is Venezuela's political reality.
I can't tell you how many times Venezuelans have told me (prior to Chavez' first attempted coup in the early nineties) that the answer to Venezuela's woes would be military rule. Venezuela has been a democracy since the sixties, but they remember the days of military rule like we remember the Eisenhower fifties, as a kind of golden age, when you could leave your doors unlocked, people said yes ma'am and no ma'am, and people washed their cars on the weekends. Or something like that. And, the country was generally prosperous.
This was one of the unstated reasons they went for Chavez in a big way, he was the fulfillment of their fantasy of a military man assuming control. Supposedly, and maybe in reality for all I know, the military was the one uncorrupted institution that could always be relied on.
They saw Colonel Chavez as that uncorrupted military man riding to the rescue.
They went wild for Chavez when he launched his abortive coup in 1992; he was later pardoned by politicians trying to cap on his popularity, which is how he got out of jail, and why he was later able to enter political life when he ought to have spent the rest of his natural life in prison for treason, and for the deaths of the hundreds of soldiers who died thanks to him.