Day 5 of dictatorship: the regime says we are a democracy again. We are laughing.

So what has happened after the high court flip-flop of the wee hours of last Friday?

Nobody believes it, except the usual suspects who pretend to believe it. And how could people be expected to believe it? In no serious country the high court flip-flops within hours, "tending" to the plea of the executive power, and just strikes down the offensive article just as if it did not change the whole sentence roots whatsoever.

The regime stupidly proved to the world that there is indeed no separation of powers in Venezuela even though they claim here in Venezuela all public powers are separated. Not that people did not know about it, of course, but it made their work easier today to take the first solid steps towards applying the Inter-American Democratic Charter to Venezuela. The OAS gathered this afternoon in spite of sabotage from Bolivia, whose ambassador wears at all time some kind of pseudo ethnic requirement broad brim hat which is, well, ridiculous and, well, rude to be worn indoors. But then again, it is Bolivia and its rudeness should not surprise us since it defended Venezuela whose ambassador Moncada outdid himself today in shrill insults until mercifully he stood up and left the room.  After that show even Salvador could not vote for Venezuela and abstained.

As far as I can see it the hysteria of Venezuela is in fact calculated. Cuba has told them that they have been living outside of the OAS since 1962 and they managed. So can Venezuela. What is at play here is the best way to leave the OAS: be kicked out or resigning is just a matter of political convenience at home. I would like just to underline that Moncada had a great line of the ridicule today when he said it was a scandal for these countries to talk about Venezuela without Venezuela's permission. I would have loved to see the individual detail of the ambassadors face when they heard that. Never mind that in recent years Venezuela was the main proponent/talker of applying the democratic charter to Honduras and Paraguay......  Chavismo has always excelled in double and triple standards.

At any rate the OAS did vote. The document is perfectly reasonable but the mere use of reason is enough to send into a tail spin of negativeness the regime who is more afraid of reason than vampires from garlic and crosses. I would like to point out a couple of paragraphs of the rather short resolution:

The decisions of the Supreme Court of Venezuela to suspend the powers of the National Assembly and to arrogate them to itself are inconsistent with democratic practice and constitute an alteration of the constitutional order of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Notwithstanding the recent revision of some elements of these decisions, it is essential that the Government of Venezuela ensures the full restoration of democratic order.

My highlights. Clearly nobody believes that last Friday flip-flop was done with the intention of the regime to amend its ways

To urge action by the Venezuelan government to safeguard the separation and independence of powers and to restore full constitutional authority to the National Assembly.

And in case it was not clear enough, it is necessary for the regime to restore the normal functions of the National Assembly (or else?). In short, there are dozens of sentences against the NA since January 2016 and they need all to be revised. After all the TSJ has demonstrated last week how easy it is to reverse a "final" sentence in Venezuela. Where would the hold ups be?

Meanwhile as the OAS moved at its usual glacial pace, things went faster elsewhere.  We had this in Caracas:

Representative @JuanRequesens has had his face slashed today by the red shirted storm troopers of @nicolasmaduro regime a.k.a. colectivos pic.twitter.com/gdryudfxNS

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) April 3, 2017

Nice to have these images sent to the OAS on the very day where your democratic credentials are questioned.

And we had that in Montevideo.

Here on the right is a letter from Uruguay president Tabaré Vasquez demanding that either Maduro proves his accusation of Uruguay Foreign Minister conspiring against Venezuela or offer a public retraction.  Way to make friends Nicolas! Apparently we also learned from Maduro himself that Vasquez is not picking up the phone....

I was forgetting!  Before the OAS meeting Mercosur decided to apply its own Democratic Charter to Venezuela.

What is next? Anyone's guess. The narco-thuggo-corrupto-regime is not going to yield so it will break one way or the other from Mercosur and OAS. Remember, they cannot yield because their fate would be jail. Only if Cuba were to receive a couple of hundred chavista exiles (with their millions) could we get a "peaceful" transition.

The only means of pressure actually comes from the National Assembly whose vote is indispensable to approve loans and the sale of state assets so that the regime can keep surviving. That is the whole, unique purpose of the regime recently, illustrated so well in the fateful decision whose main objective was to allow the regime to sell oil concession to Russia without NA approval. That they sneaked inside the ruling the catastrophic paragraph that is bringing the regime so much grief lately is the best illustration.
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PS: there were also, in addition, but I was forgetting it since it seems to be becoming a routine, more political arrests. Now they are sent directly to military tribunals who apparently the regime thinks they are the only ones allowed to judge on such "crimes". Of course, military justice in Venezuela is neither military nor justice.  I am sure the OAS has been informed of this new democratic correction of the regime.