Chavismo's Agenda: 1 PM, proclaim dictatorship; 8 PM, first act on character

Well, it did not take long.

Around 1 PM, the Venezuelan high court, TSJ, decided that it was OK for somebody that has not been elected, not even to a local council, to rule over Venezuela for as long as it takes.

You can discuss at will the merits and demerits of that decision but the unavoidable fact is that Nicolas Maduro, AN APPOINTED OFFICIAL, will be for all practical purposes president of Venezuela for as long as he can get away with it. It could be short, a few weeks, until Chavez dies or comes back, or it can be long, as long as Chavez is plugged in to some device that keeps it alive even if brain dead.

Certainly history abounds of such cases when a citizen was propelled into high office for a "transition". When that happens in a democracy most players agree with the transition figure which in general is not allowed to run in the coming elections and whose role is limited to a certain number of things only, and for a well defined period of time at that.  In Venezuela, considering the infighting inside chavismo, we can write with all confidence that significantly more than 50% of the country does not agree with Maduro to be president for months, without an election, without a mission, without any other concern but to ensure his election to a new presidential term.

In other words, Venezuela has passed to be a fraudulently elected dictatorship to a de facto regime, a.k.a. a plain old fashioned dictatorship, but of the XXI century variety of course.

In case you had any doubt by 8 PM the new regime had performed its first official act of repressive dictatorship by forcing Globovision to stop presenting information and interpretation on constitutional article 231, one of the 4 constitutional provisions violated today by the TSJ.

Not only the newly set chavista regime starts with a repression of freedom of information  but it may be an outright violation of human rights as Globovision could well be closed down for reasons that are not necessary to discuss here. It is important to notice that of all the remaining "free" media in Venezuela, Globovision is the only one with the due coverage of recent events, and on cable only. The other networks, Venevision and Televen, barely mention the situation and discuss it at length even less. Thus if Globovison is closed, it is a violation of my human right to be informed as I would have access only to the state media for "interpretations" of the legalese behind the coup that took place today.

All indications are that the new regime has acted as a dictatorship acts.  Around 3-4 PM several "authorities" of the new regime have demanded that Globovision be investigated (videos). Within 4 hours CONATEL, the regulatory agency, had emitted a ruling and sent it to Globovision. In 4 hours they barely had time to write it up and certainly no time for consultation or even less to offer Globovision a chance to send over the contested material for a quick verification.  This is EXACTLY how a dictatorship works, heck, a totalitarian regime works because at least in a dictatorship they close outright the joint whereas in a totalitarian regime there is an attempt at building a lie for propaganda usage. I prefer dictatorship on this regard, more honest in a perverse way...

There you have it.

I am leaving you for the night with two things.

First a video of Maria Corinna Machado with Amanpour of CNN, in English, today.  no comments needed on that one, except to let you know that the world is watching.



And a personal comment as to the future of this blog.

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I have mentioned a few times that I was going to go into a sort of semi-retirement  blogging about other stuff than Chavez politics.  Well, this cannot be fulfilled because now we are in a dictatorship and I must stand for my country. In fact, I suspect that today's coup will be a decisive turning point to wake up a significant portion of the chavista electorate who may have agreed to Chavez many legal violations but may be now unwilling to accept them from Maduro or Cabello.....

I have written that since late 2010 I consider Venezuela a dictatorship, one wanted by the people since the bulk of the population is, well, simply careless and other not very nice adjectives which I listed on October 7.

But today all is changed and I must resume the combat even if useless. My principles are at stake. One thing is to let mediocrity continue under a "constitutional" presidency of any post Chavez chavista, another thing is to have my country be ruled by a de facto regime, with the added insult that other countries may not care about it whatsoever. Honduras and Paraguay were easy posturing but Venezuela!  Too many interests there!  Too much money to suck!!!

I need to remind readers that of all "founding bloggers" of the anti Chavez Resistance I am the last one still residing in Venezuela and thus the one most exposed to reprisals by a regime which has shown outright its colors today. I am not anticipating going to jail tomorrow, but it is clear that the Globovision aggression today is a demonstration that the regime is trying to scare us into submission, silence, abjection. That it is more a mark of weakness than of strength by the regime is of little comfort when its goons will knock at my door, as they already did a few days ago for a tweeterer, @LucioQuincioC . The regime has already announced that other Tweeterers will be investigated. Surely bloggers, journalists, media and what not are in the mire (yesterday I was re-tweeted by a biggie and got a lot of insults from chavistas, proving that they may ignore me but certainly know who I am).

I am back.