Does chavismo want an election? (election 2015 YV-2)

Count me in those who still doubt that there will be elections on December 6. I cannot see the regime going through elections unless it is certain that the opposition will not get more than 90 seats (about 55%). With that number it should not be too difficult for the regime to lure away enough opposition representatives to recover a weak majority within a year or two. Considering the complete control over everything else, the regime thinks that this is the worst case scenario they are willing to accept.

The banality of evil, Caracas style

Tonight I twitted this:

Oyendo Nieves me la paso pensando en Hanna Arendt y la banalidad del mal. #ConcluFiscal

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) October 28, 2015

In English: Listening to {prosecutor} Nieves I keep thinking of Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil.

One of the top prosecutors in the Leopoldo Lopez show trial has defected to the US and is now saying that the whole operation against Lopez was a scam, that the intention was to put him away for the election of 2015 and more. In fact Nieves went as far as to say, more or less, that the order to arrest Lopez already existed before the events for which he was finally arrested in February 2014.

The cornerstone issue (election 2015 YV-1)

I have been away for yet another long period but I am back for a series of short posts on the December election. Thus the first one should be about the cornerstone issue (plus some minor that are directly implied with the main issue).

As informed readers are aware, the Venezuelan situation is going from bad to worse. As such, any potential "normalcy" that could be associated with the scheduled December election is done away with speedily. Fortunately this has a positive effect: the crudeness of the moment peels away layers of cracked political paint painfully plastered by the regime. Now we have one overwhelming issue for the election: who's gonna deal with the disaster as of December 7.

Weil sums up the Venezuelan situation

Cartoonist Weil publishes an extraordinary cartoon (and he has quite a few of them!)

In the background the symbol of the corrupt regime gangs fighting against each other for political control through colectivos, grenades, etc...

Further in front petty thieves stealing in hunger whatever they can (toilet paper, for example, how can that be any more pathetic?).

In front two items, paupers fighting over a chicken while someone is dead on ground through hunger, crime, whatever....

There you have it, Venezuela today. I am impressed.

Electoral scoundrels

No, this is not a post about the constant pro Chavez partisanship of the electoral board CNE. No, this is not a post about the government abuses on the campaign trail. No, this is not about the impossibility of the opposition to voice its political offer on any nation wide network.

This is a post about the scoundrels that flourish under a neo-totalitarian regime like the one Venezuela called for and now suffers from.

Electoral campaigns can be a way to bring the best in people but in general it tends to bring the worst. I am going to detail two recent stories.

William Ojeda

The first one is for the turncoat supreme, William Ojeda. This lackluster character/journalist came to his 15 minutes of fame when he published about 20 years a go a book titled "How much is a judge", pretending to illustrate how corrupt was the judicial system before Chavez. That the judicial system has become infinitely worse since is not the point here, the point is that actually some of the tenets of his "investigation book" have been questioned since. That should have given pause to a few wishing to associate with him.

2015: the lost year

It has been three weeks without posting. But in all truth what should have I written about?