Live! The implosion of the opposition alliance

Well, that was faster than expected.

Week 2 of the dictatorship: Elections now? That ship has sailed!

Yesterday show of strength by the opposition, in numbers and determination, has shaken the regime, and in particular Maduro who does not have the intellectual heft to understand what is truly going on in the country. His evilness and street smarts can only go so far, no matter how much the Cubans are trying to direct him. And they took him way farther than anyone expected! I am not saying that he is done with, one should never underestimate people who think along mafia lines or feel like cornered dogs. What I am saying is that when people have as their lone strategy violence, cynicism and bald faced lies, then they are at their wit's end.

Today Maduro did his Sunday show and announced that he could not wait for elections so as to trounce the opposition and radicalize the revolution. Oh my! Where do I start?

On to week 2 of dictatorship: getting rid of nuisances

Today was calm compared to yesterday but equally important.

The news of course is the annulation of political rights for Capriles. When his term as governor of Miranda ends, then for 15 years he will not be able to run for any office, not even for dog catcher. Inasmuch as this is the flashy headline, that Capriles is barred from future office is not quite the main news of the day: this one we will have to piece it together.

Understanding the political moment

I have been back for two weeks now and events are just unfolding too fast for me to write about them, considering the depression that arises from coming back to what has become a hell hole. Let's just order our thoughts together, shall we?

L'air du temps:
Borges getting his nose broken

One way is to look at the main hard data and its effects. The reader on its own will be able to draw the general picture after the fact.


Jail for you

The driving force in this mega crisis is that under the concept of world justice and transparency a few dozens of the higher up in the regime know they will never be able to find peace and solace once out of office. Their fate for them is jail, tomorrow, in a decade, it does not matter. If they do not die first they will end up in jail. They know that.

Somebody home?

I wonder if anyone is aware of the chasm ahead. From what I can see it would seem like no, nobody is taking notice. But then again I may be wrong. Hopefully.

Now what? Venezuela on static noise

I have convinced myself that all political players still out there have decided to wait and see what happens though its own gravitational pull. Maduro has decided that the solution to all the regime failed control system is yet more controls. Capriles goes to the beach and gives us a set of vulgar to pictures from Playa Parguito which in Venezuelan slang is much fodder for chavista homophobia. Meanwhile, even though the regime hides official statistics such as inflation and scarcity index, it cannot be hidden that the country has more than likely entered into a recession.
ugly

Even though Ramirez has been evicted/promoted, the regime is strictly unable to take any significant economical measure. Not even to increase the price of gas, a measure that may not be able to help much in the foreign currency balance of the country but that would raise at least some local currency cash to pay the regime's local obligations. In fact it is quite possible that the gas price increase has become such a big bugaboo for the regime that this one has simply paralyzed on any reform, or so Maxim Ross thinks in an interview in La Razon.

Venezuelan weather vanes

I suppose that I should start with an apology: a lot of important stuff has been happening in the political country and I have not covered it. The only excuse is that things are changing so fast, and so nowhere, that I was vainly hoping for a weather lull to try to figure out the direction things were taking.  Alas, it'aint not happening.

The heavy sense of being adrift is permanent. Both sides of the political spectrum are at a loss as to what to do with themselves. And this is aggravated for the regime as it needs to find a way to keep ruling the country while maintaining it viable enough so that looting can go unabated. All measures, from both sides, are piece meal, expedient, often amoral, improvised, even politically rudimentary as the country is regressing not only in technology but also in political language and ideas. A home made weather vane would be more effective to give us direction.

This being said, let me take a shot at writing a rather long piece that some of you may find entertaining to read this week end if you are bored.

Can the Venezuelan opposition MUD recover?

The question is not idle: two of its "major" directors are forcing us to question thoughtfully not only whether the MUD can renew itself or if it has any strategy against the regime, but if its actually intending to fight the regime, amen of being able to understand what is going on in the country. As for its alleged leader, Capriles Radonski, by now I am afraid I am through with him.

Ramon Jose Medina cynical callousness (redundancy of sorts intended)

This happened:



In this video Ramon Jose Medina says that the MUD has no plans to bring out of jail Leopoldo Lopez, that he put himself into that mess, and we assume from his amused, scornful look, that this is not MUD 's problem. You do not need to understand Spanish, just look at his facial expressions. And now he is trying to back track, but it'aint flying and Voluntad Popular, Lopez's party, has demanded his resignation as second secretary of the MUD, which means second in charge after Aveledo. The communique of VP goes as far as suggesting that Medina is in fact collaborating with the regime (1).

The political moment

Imposed distractions notwithstanding I have not forgotten to try to follow what is going on politically.  Here is my quick take, for whatever it is worth.

Is Capriles going to negotiate our surrender?

Apparently Capriles has announced that there has been "contacts" with the regime and that there will be a meeting.

Bullshit.

Brief comments on the OAS resolution

The lengthy and often postponed OAS debate on the situation of Venezuela gave birth to a shameful communique where only two countries saved their honor by putting comments down, the USA and Panama (although I understand that Canada did not approve but the tally of the votes does not appear).

Three conclusion: 1) the OAS is clearly useless 2) the regime scores a point and 3) the April 2013 strategy of Capriles and the MUD is exacting a heavy price on them.

Day 5: the Venezuelan spring seeks organization

UPDATED

OK, so my title is a little bit wishful thinking at this time, but we are on our way there: anyone following Twitter accounts from Venezuela will realize that today, at day 5 of the first official protest of February 12 in Caracas that there are more than half a dozen flash points across the country. Of variable sizes for sure but what is remarkable is that they persist. What is more remarkable is that even as I chose February 12 at the start, we should not forget that these protests started a few days earlier in Tachira and Merida before spreading across the country: this is not, it bears repeating, a caprice from Caracas Eastern suburbs inhabitants, this is the expression of a national malaise, like it or not.

Venezuela's opposition inner trouble

The casual observer may think that the opposition is about to collapse, that it has lost unity, that they are not serious, etc.  So as a public service I would like to remind some stuff and bring some constructive speculation, I hope, on some other stuff.

I am the true oppo, you are a fake one, he has no idea what h's doing, we will all sink, aren't they lucky

This week we have Henrique Capriles bitching like a spoiled brat on Twitter contrasting with a Maria Corina Machado muscling in, while Leopoldo Lopez plucks the socialdemocrat daisy.  And yet it all makes perfect sense as Diego Arria Twittergloats.

The politics of crime in Venezuela

I am going to be brief and to the point: the current unbearable crime rate of Venezuela is in 99% the responsibility of the current regime. Nothing can be done until the regime is replaced by someone else. And even if that replacement were to come today, it will take years for us to have a more "tolerable" rate of crime. The 1% that I left out is to acknowledge that crime existed before Chavez reached power. So the seed existed. Chavez needed only to water it and fertilize it profusely, which he did.

2013 in review: the year Leopoldo Lopez was man of the year

If I am going to indulge in "end of year" reviews I might go ahead and commit the biggest sin of all, decide who was man of the year in Venezuela.

That nasty tendency to settle scores, or the truth about Sunday 8

In politics even the best friends at some point feel compelled to settle scores.  Thus we should not be surprised when followers ask for blood, as it is happening now from the press, through Twitter, to my competing blogs, who are all only too happy it seems to accuse the MUD of sugar coating the truth and what not. Me, a long time critic of Capriles, find myself in the need to add a post scriptum to defend him (sort of)  to my conclusion entry of last Friday.

The 2013 mayoral election results (2): a bad day for Primero Justicia and Capriles

To start looking into the different results and making interpretations it is important to keep in mind a few things. For example, there are no legal elections scheduled for a couple of years, the National Assembly being the next ones for December 2015. Certainly with a regime as it is we can always expect a referendum, a recall something, etc. But it is clear that even a constitutional assembly is a long reach for an opposition that cannot keep its voters motivated. It requires A LOT of motivation to go to a constitutional assembly and not only Capriles failed to make this election a referendum on Maduro, a lousy president if any, but he lost about 2 million voters that went to the mall, watched TV, etc. That chavismo has as many refusing to show up is no consolation.  Thus we are going to have to live with what we have now: 3 governors, not even a quarter of mayors, and no TV. It is going to be a long two years in which the regime will make sure that the opposition does not get the means to finance an election, any election, even one for condominium chair if possible. This way the dictatorship can pretend to pass as a democracy knowing that it cannot lose elections.

From rabipelao courts to public lynching: a day of contradictions in the regime

A regime on overdrive to survive has no qualms exploring interesting ways to reach results and contradict itself as it goes, as often as needed.  If you needed evidence that Maduro is grasping for straws, you get them in the last couple of days.

How to hold an electoral campaign under Venezuela neo-fascism?

For long time readers of this blog the title should not come as a surprise. It has been long that I have rejected the democratic pretense of the regime as well as the one coming from those that still pretend to comment "objectively" on Venezuela. That is those who try to find a fig leaf of democracy, be they foreign journalists, bloggers or actual Venezuelan journos. As far as I am concerned we are in a military regime since at least late 2010, a regime which is turning openly fascist since late 2012.  If you do not agree at least in part with me, then you have been wasting your time reading this blog.