The dictator's hour

So we are in a dictatorship. And this one has made new progress these past days to prove to the world it is so.  We had Sunday a totally infamous presentation by the president Nicolas Maduro where live on TV he decided who is guilty of what and how.  This based on torture.  Yesterday he went further on that path convoking the militia to Caracas to stop the massive opposition protest planned for tomorrow and forcing the army to repeat once again their indefectible oath to the revolution and its heir, the dictator.  As a bonus he promised to arm the militia, which one needs to be recalled , is not constitutional. But details are not the regime's forte.

The army today is controlling all the streets it can and all the entries to Caracas to make sure protesters do not come to fill in Caracas protests. Useless as the opposition is convoking protests in all major cities of Venezuela. You need not go to Caracas to state that Maduro is a piece of shit: you can do it in the comfort of your own city where repression awaits for you all the same than in Caracas. Decentralization at its best.

Funny dicator. He does not rule, he is just the front man but it seems that he has started to believe that all the narco generals, the corrupt generals and civilians, the Cubans cashing in whatever cash they can still grab, trust power into his hands.  Meanwhile we read things like this:

This memo of April 17 "exhorts" PDVSA employees from the Orinoco area (almost a day drive to Caracas) to attend the regime called counter march to block access to the opposition to downtown Caracas. It starts with the following words "Within the merciless War and the terrorist attacks of the venezuelan ultra right, the oil industry has the imperious need to regroup its forces in the defense of our sovereignty and independence, and support to our Worker president Nicolas Maduro to invite all...." you get it.  I respected the words with capital letters as I think they betray the subconscious of whomever wrote this memo.

Of course outside the country no body is buying it and even Cuba takes its distances from an eventual bloodbath for which they probably gave the order to the army. the local representation of the European Union had a communique (rather vague but better than nothing, and at least implying that the EU will have observers in the streets). OAS secretary on the other hand went all out with a communique of a strength unheard of in the OAS, which reflects the major hemispheric concern about what Maduro is trying to do. In English.

Of course, solemne declarations also exist in Venezuela, like the one from the National Assembly with a solid representation of its members, putting a face to the resistance to Maduro, and putting a face to its possible victims tomorrow.

The hour is dire indeed.

The opposition has convened a freedom march tomorrow starting from more than a dozen points in Caracas. As such it is impossible to block unless the regime acts early to block through whatever means the starting points in downtown Caracas, their hallowed excuse for repression.

The regime who dodged such a massive show of strength by the opposition last year through a fake dialogue has not found any excuse this time to slow down the mounting protest. The aslt two weeks fo marches and repression only seem to have united the opposition and render it more decided to end this conflict once and for all.

All sorts of threat have been uttered such as this Monday promises to arm the militia to maintain order against the opposition. That an election would be the best way to end the conflict is not an option for a regime who knows that 1) it will lose them and 2) it will have its leadership go to jail shortly afterwards for the crimes committed.  So we have pictures like this one commented by Le Monde from France. Of course, when you are an European and you see brown shirts like that with a peppering of military you jump. This is possibly the worst message to be read in any capital of Europe, probably even Budapest (Ankara is not in Europe and will never be apparently, but I digress).

Le Monde underlines this:

« Fini le temps des traîtres, des trahisons, fini le temps des hésitations, que chacun se définisse : on est avec la patrie ou on est contre elle ! », a lancé le président vénézuélien, lundi.
"The time of traitors is over, the times of hesitation is over, may each one self define: we are with the fatherland or we are against it." thrown by the venezuelan president on Monday.

Sieg Heil would do nice at the end of that.

We also read the declarations of 11 LatAm countries warning the regime about abuse tomorrow. It is nice to see that Tal Cual reports on this lifting the logo of this blog, a logo since 2003 which has been lifted by several people from chavistas to Tal Cual. Lifted by Tal Cual is an honor and proves that at least someone there reads my blog. I do take the best pictures, check out my instagram :-)

But again I digress.

The point here is that Maduro seems to go all out against tomorrow and he is clearly wanting a confrontation to solidify his dictatorship. Will the army oblige?

Meanwhile tomorrow in Caracas you may choose your meeting point for 10:00 AM. I will start from Plaza Las Americas #20 if anyone cares to meet me. And I will try to post stuff through Instagram if signal allows, which is rare when so many people are in the street using bandwidth. It will be nice if I could get a pic from EVERY starting point to post it here tomorrow evening.

Que este #19A sea el punto de partida de la mayor presión que se haya hecho contra la dictadura. Desbordemos Vzla. #19AVzlaContraElGolpe pic.twitter.com/ELzhbj9tJU

— Unidad Venezuela (@unidadvenezuela) April 14, 2017