Venezuela is installing a constituent assembly

And I am not going to talk about that.  Except for one comment: that assembly is illegitimate because it was convoked using a REGRESSION of human and civil rights respective to the constitutional assembly convocation of 1999. That is, you cannot convoke a constitutional assembly under less rights than the constitution you want to replace. Period. Anything else is discussing what is the sex of angels when they live under a dictatorship.

Tintinophiles need no translation

This being said, today the question is what is the opposition going to do about running on regional elections in December. The decision must be, like, today because by Monday it will not be possible to register candidates anymore (note that chavismo has not registered anyone but they usually wait to the last minute anyway).

The problem is that electoral board CNE has been shown to commit a major fraud last Sunday, a fraud that could cover up to 50% of the votes allegedly cast.


The problem is that the election could be suspended at any time by the constitutional assembly.

The problem is that the elected governors can be erased at will by the constitutional assembly which has been elected under no boundaries for its action.

The confusion is that there is no right or wrong decision.

The embarrassment is that the opposition alliance MUD was caught unprepared.

Yes, that is right, for its tough talk the MUD has shown once again that there was no plan B, and the people are MORE THAN justified in feeling pissed off at the MUD.

It is, for me inconceivable that the MUD assumed that the constitutional assembly elections would not take place ever. I admit that I was among those that thought that at the last minute the regime would not carry through the coup. But once it was clear that the regime was divided and that a faction wanted the election in order to secure control of the regime it was becoming certain that the election would take place. And it did, the humongous fraud being committed by the losing side inside the regime to pad results and get a majority.  And the MUD did not preview that?  The MUD never discussed that the following week of the vote they would have to announce governor candidates?

I am in shock!  This is the true scandal, not whether the MUD should run as casual observers would think.

So this is the dramatic choice the MUD faces because they never discussed the issue before, or at least never reached an agreement.

They run, in spite of a CNE biased to the point of major electoral fraud. Though if they run they will have witnesses at the voting stations and thus there will be less fraud, the opposition assured to have enough vote to compensate for the fraud. There is yet a problem in that scenario: if the regime thinks that it will lose badly at any time it can suspend the election through a constitutional assembly fiat. So what else would be new?

The second option is that they do not run and thus the regime puts its candidates, wins everything and commits fraud once again to prove that all of "el pueblo" is back in the regime's fold.

A true cornelian dilemma.

Damned if you do (Maria Corina Machado) damned if you don't (Ramos Allup). Or the other way, I can't tell.

I am not going to discuss details of the pro and con, just blurt it out.

The opposition should field all sorts of candidates on the condition that they will sign to withdraw their name once a primary or a consensus candidates that is not them has been picked. That is, all parties that want should register names while the MUD decides a way to pick the unity name. There is no choice.

More importantly the MUD needs to make a serious overall in its decision making system. Otherwise people like me are just going to stop paying attention. We amy decide to stay home or go out and start the civil war on our own. The lack of coherence inside the MUD being the culprit.  I would like to point out that on March 21 I was going as far as saying that maybe it is time for the MUD to split as the too divergent interests inside are killing it.  Had we divided then....