Friday, December 17, 2010

Freedom of thought is also gone in Venezuela?

MAJOR UPDATE Janiot does Escarra

It is not enough that freedom of information and expression are being killed this week in Venezuela, freedom of thought is also questioned.  In what must be a first for any self described democratic country, a new law voted in a rush today will punish any representative in the National Assembly to switch sides, to vote according his or her conscience.  You need to read the AVN brief note to measure the fact in full.

This so wrong on so many aspects that one must wonder if they realized what they were deciding when they planned that law.  There must dozens of constitutional violations in such a law, so obvious that we do not need to dig into it.  I mean, if that precedent were to be accepted we could conceive in the future laws that would forbid freedom of religion since you would not be able to convert to a different religion.


Parliament would become totally unnecessary since we would only need to count the percentage vote once every 5 years and name a single person managing the different percentile votes to approve or not vote any law sent by the executive.

But Nazional Assembly president, Cilia Flores, new born fascist extraordinaire, had the gumption to say that the law was necessary because of the "betrayal" of PODEMOS.  That is, the very basis of parliament, of representative democracy, the undoing and undoing of coalitions according to the country situation would be forbidden!  She even felt sorry that this new law could not be retroactively applied to PODEMOS.

Soon, following the implications of such legislation, thinking differently than the "majority" will be considered betrayal.  That is, if you do not publicly show support then you will be accused of thought crime and woe is you.

Of course, this blogger is guilty, guilty, guilty!

MAJOR UPDATE

Sure enough, the preposterous idea that an elected representative should never vote according to his or her conscience has been a flash news all around the world including at CNN.  Tonight CNN en español star journalist, Patricia Janiot, interviewed first Carolina Botero of IACHR  To my great surprise, Carolina Botero as a spokes person of the IACHR was all but militant in her criticism of the current laws under discussion (note, the European Parliament also condemned recent developments in Venezuela, so it is really a world wide rejection).

To "balance" CNN gamely called Carlos Escarra, one of the biggest (in all senses) apologists of the regime.  Well, the discussion turned sour quickly becasue Janiot actually wanted a reply to her question: why would  you punish a representative that voted according to his conscience?  And Escarra, showing the lout he is, simply insulted her and hung up the phone.  Even Escarra silver tongue could not defend that one, so out of civil discourse the law is.  Observe, if you understand Spanish how Escarra used the standard chavista strategy to question the journalist when the question is a difficult one.  But Janiot has dealt with Chavez hismelf and she certainly was not going to be browbeaten by a scum like Escarra.


15 comments:

  1. In Canada, we had a Parliamentarian who ran on a platform of "I will be the Conservatives' worst nightmare" if elected.

    Within one week of his being elected, he joined the Conservatives as a Cabinet Minister. Local people were outraged, since if they wanted a Conservative, they would have voted for a Conservative.

    So I am sympathetic to the idea that some kinds of talanquera-jumping are undemocratic.

    But Flores' idea here seems to be that PSUVistas were elected to do whatever Chavez wants, and so if they don't, they won't have a vote.

    It is essentially a method of increasing Presidential control, which in Venezuela makes no sense whatsoever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:54 AM

    don't know but they all sound quite edgy


    http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/185768/escarra-y-patricia-janiot-protagonizaron-un-incidente-verbal-en-cnn


    Correfoc

    ReplyDelete
  3. These people must be feeling more fearful and insecure.

    People demand total loyalty, when they feel they live in an unpredictable and hostile world.Their passion is fear mostly because they mistrust their own common sense and inner authority.

    Read: you have to be totally loyal to me so my fear will subside.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous3:54 AM

    Esta noche por CNN en español, Patricia Janiot le hizo preguntas sobre la Ley "Salto de talanquera" (es anticonstitucional y totalmente anti Derechos Humanos,) al diputado del Psuv Carlos Escarra, que se enredó no sabiendo que contestar y colgó el teléfono. Esto prueba que todos estos y que diputados son unas focas amaestradas. La Maga Lee

    ReplyDelete
  5. Eduardo4:28 AM

    Esta Ley contra los saltos de talanquera es DE LO ULTIMO. O sea que debe haber disciplina partidista en cualquier discusión. Pues sí que esto es fascismo puro. Se acabó la discusión dentro del PSUV también. No será esto un tiro por la culata, quien se cala eso? Y ahí mismo, en plenaria, denunciado por sus compañeros en cayapa! Pueden cerrar la AN de una vez, entonces.

    ReplyDelete
  6. And of course it is also anti-democratic that they did not unveil this law before standing as candidates...so their voters would know that they would have zero independence as legislators.

    But maybe people already guessed that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The bright side of this is that the PSUV has apparently given up all hope of getting their 60% super-majority. Other than that, though, nothing to applaud.

    Daniel: 'thinking differently than the "majority" will be considered betrayal'

    It already is. The difference is that it can now be explicitly illegal, rather than just punishable outside of the law.

    Classic hypocrisy: 'Dijo Flores: Allí están “sentados con los que dieron el golpe de Estado"'

    And then her little slip: "La traición nos inspira". Yes, it does.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Island Canuck4:17 PM

    After all these years of disappointments & abuse by Chavez you just become numb.

    Every day the papers & Internet are full of more abuses of power & nobody does NOTHING!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous5:02 PM

    From the AVN link:

    "...[Cilia Flores] destacó que la modificación “protegerá al pueblo para que tenga más confianza al votar y saber que ese voto no será defraudado, y que el candidato electo será consecuente con su oferta electoral”."

    Did Chavez use the word "Socialism" at any point in the 2006 campaign? Did any of the current AN members (including Cilia herself) use that word in their campaign? Because, as far as I remember, the whole Socialism of the XXI Century (tm) crap didn't crop up until AFTER the 2006 election.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jeff, sorry, but no, no way. No matter how someone thinks initially, that is not the way, simply noooo!

    No democratic country prevents deputies from going against their party, as far as I am aware. No way. I just saw it recently in Britain with the tuition fees voting. It was the same here in Belgium with other issues, it is the very same thing in Germany. There are discussions and if vote isn ot secret, people discuss and some may be expelled. But they remain as deputies. If there is one procedure you can start with them is via referendum. Otherwise, NO WAY! This is one of the most basic things there are. Deputies should do what is right according to their conscience, punto.

    If that guy in Canada went later to the Conservatives, then that is the voters' fault that they were so gullible.

    Sorry, you cannot know all the time when someone will turn out to be a liar and a disgrace, but you can know sometimes: when that guy was a coup monger, when he was a criminal, when he is way too populist and yes, when he says such crap as "I am going to be the worst nightmare of X" (whatever that X is, be it conservatives, liberals as US, as Canada, as Germany, as Britain, be it anything, including cockroaches).

    ReplyDelete
  11. 1979 Boat People5:33 PM

    OT:

    "
    Boat carrying asylum-seekers from Iran, Iraq crashes on Christmas Island; dozens dead
    "

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/15/2010-12-15_dozens_killed_as_boat_loaded_with_asylumseekers_crashes_on_christmas_island.html

    No no no NOT AGAIN.

    This could happen to Venezuela in the near future

    ReplyDelete
  12. The first time I saw Carlos Escarrá I had a very strong déjà-vu. Then I remembered. I was 11 and went with a group of friends to the Cabriales river in my home town between lessons. We found him there: a large, horrendous Bufo marinus. I had never seen one like that before, and I had seen many. Two of my classmates got hold of a bag and managed to catch him. He was heavy, very heavy. We managed to slipped him into into our history class. When the teacher started to talk the other boys set him free. He croaked. He sprang around. He saw us with his lifeless, nasty eyes and big mouth. The girls saw him too and started to cry and climb onto the desks.
    And now he is a deputy on Venezuela's National Assembly.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I agree with Kepler that, in the final analysis, party-jumpers should be punished, or rewarded, by the electorate.

    What has happened in Venezuela seems to me to be a kind of talanquera-jumping by the entire PSUV. They ran on the principles set out in the 1999 Constitution, then they advocate Cuban-style quasi-fascism once elected.

    While I don't think such deviation can be criminalized, it isn't democratic, either.

    It would be useful to know which potential jumpers-out-of-the-PSUV this is directed at. It may have something to do with the factions denounced by Chavez in November, and/or the various "currents" discussed in Aporrea, which have elected deputies among the loyal disgruntled group.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Charly8:01 PM

    Daniel: totally off the subject but you people need a break from the current situation back home.

    I have been now a few days in Uganda and tried to access Moctavio site, without success. I get the message:

    The URL you are trying to access has been blocked because "HTTP access denied". URL: devilsexcrement.com/
    CATEGORY: Porn

    I do not know if it is the word "devil" or "excrement" or the fact that the site is anti-chavista that block me, but, I think the last option is to be discarded. Nobody knows who Chavez is around here and one person told me that Venezuela was a town somewhere in the Americas.

    Now back to "la constituyente".

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  15. Charly,

    That happened to me for a day or 2 about a year ago on Quico's blog

    ReplyDelete

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