Monday, July 23, 2018

What Josep Borrel really meant : a lost country

Spain had what is normal in a parliamentary system: there was a motion vote that ousted the sitting Mariano Rajoy which automatically replaced him with the "leader" of the opposition, Pedro Sanchez.  This one did not reach premiership after last elections since, well, he barely floated around a quater of the vote. But Spain is a country of instituions and Sanchez heads a ministry that is held in place in large part by the good will of very the leftist PODEMOS who is a big, bought, friend of chavismo.
The door opened again.
Borrel and Chavez son in law.

We need to understand this to interpret, in part only, the recent words of Josep Borrel, the new foreign office holder. He said during a meeting with Venezuela's foreign minister, the creep that got there because he married a Chavez daughter, that Spain will not spearhead sanctions against Venezuela anymore and that dialogue should be renewed [english].  Some in Venezuela interpret this as a success, some as a betrayal, both are wrong.

Sunday, July 08, 2018

Just saying....

So AD is leaving the opposition coalition MUD.

On June 15 I was writing the following:

In this group [willing to negotiate with the regime] we have AD and the rest. AD would be stricter in its negotiations with the regime but since it has lost tremendous credibility after the errors of its leader Ramos Allup last October, it is probably facing serious doubts inside and seems paralyzed. The rest goes from nearly dead UNT to Falcon's failed bid (could it have been otherwise? Geez...). The problem with these remnants is that they actually think that they represent a large chunk of the opposition. They do not. Only AD still has support [a relative term, it means more support than the others but not necessarily a lot of it].

Thus readers of this blog should not be surprised about that rupture. At least since March 2017. Just saying...

What does this mean?

Followers