Even in the Americas, US authority is draining away

The bad guys are getting away with it. Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who won 67% of the popular vote in Venezuela’s presidential election on 28 July but was declared to have lost by just enough for Nicolas Maduro to be proclaimed the victor after a single round, has had to flee the country.

Gonzalez, a harmless former diplomat whom the opposition put up as a candidate when its leader, Maria Corina Machado, was barred, was made to sign a document declaring Maduro the winner as a condition of being allowed to leave for Spain. After eight weeks of riots and repression, the socialist dictatorship looks secure.