The 2020 election post: the vote funeral

For those still aware of the existence of this blog you may remember that I had a post or posts about Venezuelan elections since 2003. Sometimes with quite a good prediction success.  This time I can guarantee you that tomorrow the Maduro regime will get a landslide.

In fact, the only question is how far the regime will go into tweaking the results to make sure that the"opposition" gets a credible number of seats.....

This has to be the most worthless Venezuelan election in memory. It is so bad that there is not even a point in promoting abstention as a political tool. It is so meaningless to go and vote that nobody cares about it. I, for one, were I to be in Venezuela would not vote out of "I give a rat's ass" attitude. Certainly not a militant abstention like in some past elections.

Why? So bad is the fraud set up by the regime that other countries took the very unusual step of saying that they would not recognize the results MONTHS before the election would take place and the final rules set up revealed. In normal "fraud" foreign countries wait for a few days before the vote or a few days after it to decide whether recognizing the result. 

I am not going to enter into the long list of illegal actions taken by the regime, it would become a litany. I am just going to mention my favorites.

The gerrymandering was pushed to the extreme of almost doubling the number of representatives that the constitution strictly allows.  So you can imagine what the redistricting according to this new numbers must look like! The constitution was DELIBERATELY violated and nothing happened. 

The political slavery that the regime subjects scores of Venezuelans through the food distribution system CLAP has been officially acknowledged: #2 of the regime, Diosdado Cabello, said at a recent meeting that those who do not vote tomorrow will not eat. Just like that.

A couple of months ago the regime decided through "justice" to unseat the leadership of the main opposition parties and replace them with underlings that were caught in acts of corruption and decided to side with the regime, for a few hundred thousand dollars. Cheap for the regime. That is, the regime "co-opted" the main opposition parties to build the opposition it likes; or needs, or whatever. The real reason is that these parties had decided to boycott the election so they needed to be forced into participation to justify the take over of the National Assembly by the regime: to be a victor you need a vanquished. Nobody buys it, of course, least the new guardians of these political parties who get booed when by chance they cross the path of the real militants. By the way, it has been shown that chavistas have offered on occasion the bulk of some of attendants at some of their "political campaign rallies".

Today I got a new favorite

The electoral Ripley's moment.
Watch the CNN micro in this picture. It is fake. @CNNEE never covered the event. Explanation follows. https://t.co/jKynvUDaeW pic.twitter.com/gqrSjW4MEh

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) December 5, 2020

What does that thread mean? The lack of electoral interest by the electors is so obvious, in particular for the fake opposition candidates, that they need to invent interest, going as far as putting fake micros for their press conferences that only state media attend. Maybe. Some. For regime propaganda purpose.

So that is that. No need to lose sleep over that election. No need to do electoral analysis, the more so that numbers for electors, etc. have long ceased to be reliable. No need to rush on to Internet Monday morning to check the results: if I bothered tonight I could go through the candidates list and give you at  the very least 80% of those that will "win" tomorrow. Not 100% of course since I do not know who in the "opposition" will be allowed to "win", even if they do not have the votes.

The only thing of remote interest will be the abstention numbers. Of course the electoral board CNE will not publish any real numbers of abstention or anything else (that I know off there are almost no opposition witness at poll stations so anything will go there). Still, we will not see long lines at polling stations, the more so that many polling stations have been "regrouped" for efficiency and covid safety and lack of gas for private and public transportation.  That is, to unify meager participation in several centers into a not so meager participation in a single one (one brother bothered to check his voting station and found out he was redistricted 2 miles away from his original voting center).

No, what is interesting is what will happen on December 7 with a supernumerary majority only recognized by well noted democracies like Cuba, Russia or China. On January 5 when this new assembly is seated, if they can find a way to fit all of these extra representatives in the smallish hemicycle, what will be interesting is how long will it take to arrest the 60% of the actual opposition representatives still in Venezuela now that they will have no legal protection. Yes, 40% of the representatives elected in 2015 are now in exile or in jail (never mind those that were in jail for a few months in between). And if you think of it that 60% remaining had little protection..... I hope for them that they will have found a way to leave the country over the Christmas break.