Can Sakharov save the Venezuelan opposition?

No.

At least not in its current form.

The day started in a stupendous note: the European parliament awarded its Sakharov prize to the Venezuelan opposition, namely the National Assembly that the regime has voided, the political prisoners, and the youth killed during the first half of 2017.

The rest of today's news was not so good. The regime of course dismissed the award as a direct attempt by these nasty Europeans to rekindle violence in Venezuela. The cynicism to even say such a thing goes beyond the Cuban training of these people. They are thoroughly rottenly vile.

But the regime also advanced the district mayor election to December 10, taking advantage of the opposition disarray, in a tight schedule that leaves no chance for the opposition to even name its candidates or blurb out some campaign. The regime, we know now, had long ago decided who was going to be mayor and where.  They might as well proceed to name them so we can save ourselves the anguish of an election. That the rest of the world is not going to recognize these elections is the least of the regime's worries.

And for good measure the victor of Zulia, Guanipa, who refused to swear in his job in front of the illegal and unrecognized constituent assembly has been stripped of his victory and a new election is called for Zulia. He will not be allowed to run again.

It is now clear that the refusal to hold any election last year was due to the surprise of the regime loss in December 2015. They needed to regroup and reorganize the control of the populace and the electoral system. So we had CLAP food program, and Tarjeta de La Patria which allowed the regime to label the said populace with home address and all.  Then it would be much easier to manipulate electoral rolls, etc, etc.  Once ready they went ahead and since it worked so well they are now in a rush to organize all sorts of elections before the opposition recovers. Make no mistake, the goal of the regime is 90% at the very least of all elective office. The few point are just a pretense number for propaganda purposes.

And the opposition is obliging. Let's look at today snippets.

Henri Falcon loser of Lara, blaming the abstention without wondering why there was such an abstention in Lara, went ahead to say that he would worry if Capriles were to be president of Venezuela.  I would worry too, but the detail here is that he was Capriles campaign manager three years ago. So now he tells us...  Credibility gap anyone?  For good measure he also said that the young folks that run Voluntad Popular, and allegedly Primero Justicia, are immature.  Me thinks he is ready to go back to chavismo for good.

Newest punching ball Ramos Allup made an elaborate press conference where he told among other things that Capriles has "glandular responses" to what he does not like. He tried to convince us that the had nothing to do with the 4 AD governors swearing in and that they "self-expelled themselves" from AD according to article X, alinea Z.  And some unnecessary gossip to hide, I presume, the gossip about his own relatives finance activities.  The fact of the matter is that he is not going to take sanctions against the gang of 4, meaning that he is going to let the dust settle some and then reconcile with them.  In short, he finished off the opposition alliance MUD.

Meanwhile a group of losers, of people that have not been able to make any significant mark in Venezuelan politics for the last 20 years signed an outrageous document basically approving of the gang of 4.  So there you have it, the regime surefootedly establishing its "loyal" opposition. Communist countries have done that, a famous example being Poland with "opposition" parties that voted 99% of the time for the commies.  I have also read analysts that I know are not chavistas entertaining the thought that the regime did win the election. Forgetting that the polling stations remained open illegally for up to three hours and Jorge Rodriguez himself saying that half an hour more and they'd gotten Zulia. The immense stupidity of some is truly awesome.

But the very worst for me is the silence of the "abstention party". Now that they claim that the defeat of the opposition was due to the discontent of its supporters (read: we the abstencionistas), we are expecting them to tell us what is our next step. The only thing we heard was bravos for the in exile court first rulings that are totally unenforceable in Venezuela today.  So?  Maria Corina Machado? Any concrete ideas? [crickets chirping].

So yes, I wonder if the Sakharov prize is going to do any good. I suspect that there will be a fight as to who goes to Europe to receive it.......  If they had any decency they would chose a freed political prisoner, a torture victim and an exiled one to form the trio going to the European Parliament. But what do I know.....

But the regime would be well advised not to crow too much. It is leaving no other option to the world but to step in directly. Nobody wants a "stable" narco state. Today Spain arrested two corrupt officials of PDVSA, ministers of Chavez...  ISIS danger is soon going to be over, time to turn attention to other criminals.

It is just heart breaking that the incompetence of the opposition in handling its internal squabbles is letting us no other choices but to wait for hard sanctions as our only way out.