Telling details of a rotting regime: orders from Cuba

I cannot pass on two things that tell you what a decomposed (rotten already?) country we live in.


In a Tweet the president of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, tells us that he was summoned to Havana by Chavez and just went.  Just like that?  Can you imagine the president of a democratic country summon the head of Parliament as if he were any of his ministers, an errand boy? Separation of powers anyone?

And if this was not enough by itself,

Compatriotas por instrucciones de nuestro Comandante estoy en La Habana esperando a Adán y a Jorge Arreaza para recibir sus lineamientos
— Diosdado Cabello R (@dcabellor) February 16, 2013

In which we learn that the brother of the president and his son in law are the ones that will receive him to tell him what to do. Don't these people have encrypted phone lines? And more importantly, is Chavez not "well enough" pictures and all, that he cannot receive Cabello a few minutes?

I will let you speculate on what such trip really means.

Things are indeed bad inside chavismo that they are once again dusting off old files against opposition leaders, old files that have been unable to provide hard evidence against them. Today we get the news that an old unproductive 1998 case against Leopoldo Lopez and his mother will be revived and on February 28 this one will be officially indicted. Jailed also?

Let's see.

This case has been brought over and over on state TV propaganda whenever the regime needed to damage Leopoldo Lopez. It has been 14 years already since the alleged crime and it is ONLY today that suddenly there is enough "evidence" to put Leo in jail?  That the guy has been 8 years mayor of Chacao and presidential candidate has not been incentive enough for the regime to deal with that issue once and for all? That the ICHR in Costa Rica ruled in his favor on previous attempts made against him based at least in part on that case is not enough to suggest the regime that the case is weak, at the very best?

Of course the only objective there is to fabricate whatever charge possible and get rid of a growing opposition party which came in 4th in recent elections. The regime already managed made the lone representative of Voluntad Popular into a traitor by threatening him with jail for shoddy real estate deals (Lopez should have known better but to promote Nuñez). Now it is Leopoldo's turn as the regime has embarked on a systematic drive to eliminate all opposition parties as the best way to ensure electoral victory next time around. Cuban judicial style, by the way. Primero Justicia has already three representatives under fire (of course picking first on Richard Mardo who is a real threat in Aragua state). Thus it is fitting that VP goes second. I dare to predict that the next one is Un Nuevo Tiempo because the regime aims at neutralizing first the new parties, the ones least tied to a past which, my friends, is looking everyday more like an idyllic democratic past....

Whatever it is, when a regime lowers itself to attack Lopez on objectionable grounds or summons without ceremony Cabello to Cuba to get his marching orders from Raul Castro via Chavez family you know that it is rotten to the core, and falling apart.