A way out for Venezuela: the post Duque election effect

The time has come to discuss what could be done about the Venezuelan narko kleptokracy. And the election of Ivan Duque in Colombia today does affect the possible outcomes.

At the Colombian border, with the symbolic barrier, from left to right: ex president Pastrana,
with hat; ex president Uribe, hat in hand;  Marta Lucia Ramirez, the new vice president of
Colombia and on the Venezuelan side Maria Corina Machado.  The A+ list
of the democratic Latin American right. Piñera of Chile is in thought on that picture. May 14.

The need for our criollo Nuremberg

Since I wrote last night things have not been improving.  Today the release of more political prisoners have driven home two things.

Three tweets narrate the release of Gilber Caro, a Representative of Voluntad Popular whose parliamentary immunity was trampled when he was sent for a year and a half in jails of inhumane conditions.

A few comments on governor's primaries

The good thing is that the opposition held primaries whereas the dictatorship named its candidates outright.  Using dictatorship and election in the same sentence may appear weird to the reader but this is Venezuela, a dictatorship of a new type, adapted to the XXI century international realities.

The bad thing is that these primaries may not benefit the opposition as much as they would like to pretend.  Follows a quick blow by blow, trying to demythify the opposition MUD brouhaha.

From official terror to article 350 - 6) Luisa and Leopoldo are nothing

On rare occasions in spite of all my daily turmoils I do sense a certain elation. As an history buff I am keenly aware that I am in the middle of History, with a capital H.  Be it when I listen to grenade explosions in Caracas from my patio, or whether I am gassed directly, be it Leopoldo being "freed" or whether Diosdado (and others) announcing that they are about to take arms to defend the revolution, there is no need to have extrasensorial powers to gather that something big is taking place.

How have we reached such a point?

Leopoldo and Occam

The stunning news this morning is that we woke up learning that in the middle of the night Leopoldo Lopez had been freed from his military prison jail cell at Ramo Verde.  Well, not quite free, as for "medical reasons" that are yet totally unexplained a rather buff Lopez has to remain at his home in Caracas. With the implied threat that if he does not behave well he will get back to the slammer.  But that is more braggadocio of an agonizing regime than any show of strength.

He is baaaack.........
with grey hair........

We also got a deluge of conspiracy theories. So many that I refused to keep reading my Tweets during my normal travails of Saturday.  The one that made me stop early was that the high court, TSJ, was doing that to screw the nations general attorney, Luisa Ortega, by blaming her with bad admisnitrative moves during Lopez trial.

As if the regime needed any excuse to send to jail Luisa Ortega when it choses so....

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.

Actually, is a split in Venezuelan opposition unavoidable?

I was musing about the opposition divisions becoming more intractable. And they are.

What makes me think the opposition alliance, MUD, will divide is paradoxically, in a way, an editorial of Rafael Poleo in his magazine Zeta where he attacks Diego Arria (not available on line). Whether Poleo is right in his assessment is irrelevant to our discussion. What is relevant is his vehemence against Diego Arria and what he supposedly represents.

In praise of the Trump-Tintori meeting

The meeting between Leopoldo Lopez wife, Lilian Tintori and the US president Donald Trump has not found favor among many people, many of them that should have known better. Thus the need for this brief post that I am sure will please no one.

Venezuela should allow Leopoldo Lopez, a political prisoner & husband of @liliantintori (just met w/ @marcorubio) out of prison immediately. pic.twitter.com/bt8Xhdo7al

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

Let's start with an artistic comment of the shot.

Tarecking CNN

This week has been a spinning nausea and we are only Wednesday evening. As of today we have a vice president accused of drug trafficking and fake passport emission, resulting not in an investigation but in closing CNN Spanish version.

Let me start with the obvious: when the Department of the Treasury of the United States indicates that your vice president is under investigation for MANY acts of drug trafficking there are only two options left for the president (of Venezuela or any other country). For Option one you fire, or at the very least suspend, your vice-president/prime-minister while investigations are undertaken. In Option two you break relations with the US, close the embassy of the US, call back all your staff in the US because obviously the US are liars and you cannot tolerate such a slandering of your principal politician.

Neither one took place. Instead the messenger was shot and the Spanish version of CNN was forced out of its cable broadcasts in Venezuela.

Kalends of September for chavismo, or so it seems

The regime has made its business to turn into a fateful day the vast opposition rally planned for next Thursday September 1st. The regime has a lot to lose on that day, but it made sure that its losses would be greater than necessary. And, personally, at this point I do not see how the regime could rake any gain.

It all started when the opposition tired of waiting for a Recall Election date decided to mount a massive protest against Maduro's regime, that is, demanding his exit as soon as possible. Of course, the chosen way is to hold a Recall Election before January 10 2017. The opposition to Maduro has nothing to gain from any unconstitutional settlement of the political crisis: all polls give the opposition soaring numbers since last December stunning electoral victory. Besides, even if the opposition did not enjoy a 70+ against Maduro and wanted to do a stunt, how would it do that? The Venezuelan opposition has been deprived of arms, newspapers, TV, and even of its politicians as many are in jail.

Onward the final constitutional crash: amnesty law and high court reform

The Easter lull came and went without making much of a difference.  The "calima" suffocated us in Caracas while the country went on a standstill to try to spare a few meters from the water gauge of the Guri dam, before El Niño, and regime's utter incompetence, forces a shut down of 50% of the country's electricity.

This is not Beijing, it is today over Caracas. You cannot even guess that there is a 2000 meter mountain range in the background. I have NEVER seen it that bad. The air stings slightly when you breathe.

Una foto publicada por daniel duquenal (@duquenal_at_vnv) el 21 de Mar de 2016 a la(s) 2:14 PDT

But the country is back at work, as much as it is possible, and the National Assembly has started the road to open confrontation not only with the executive, but on the true meaning of the Venezuelan constitution, as this one may be.

Where to start?

The economic emergency decree?

As readers already know this decree is a fraud and cannot be accepted as presented. The Assembly knows it is a vulgar trap to try to put the blame of the crisis on the opposition (which will not work chavismo is misreading the whole thing badly). So the opposition will examine the decree, and will reject it based on some of its glaring lacks suggesting politely that the regime reviews it.

A confusing but clarifying week

With the National Assembly swearing-in show and the collateral that came next Venezuela has experienced one of its most confusing weeks - but maybe one of its best ones-

Saddamization

The thread at the N.A. is simple. Chavismo could not find a way to stop its coming Götterdämmerung. So they came, saw and left. They could not avoid their first encounter with a free press in about a decade. Some of the questions were truly embarrassing like when a journalist was finally able to stand on the way of Cilia Flores and ask her about her narco-nephews. Not her nephews in jail in the US awaiting trial, but her NARCO-nephews, straight. This is what happens when you ignore and insult the press for so many years: they get so frustrated that they lose any sense of measure or respect. And poor Cilia, the "first fighter", the wife of president Maduro, had to pick up her pace to escape.

The banality of evil, Caracas style

Tonight I twitted this:

Oyendo Nieves me la paso pensando en Hanna Arendt y la banalidad del mal. #ConcluFiscal

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) October 28, 2015

In English: Listening to {prosecutor} Nieves I keep thinking of Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil.

One of the top prosecutors in the Leopoldo Lopez show trial has defected to the US and is now saying that the whole operation against Lopez was a scam, that the intention was to put him away for the election of 2015 and more. In fact Nieves went as far as to say, more or less, that the order to arrest Lopez already existed before the events for which he was finally arrested in February 2014.

Regime gains? Opposition gains? Lopez gains?

The guilty verdict on Leopoldo Lopez was expected though one would have thought that the maximum penalty would not have been decided. At any rate, guilty or free, the decision yesterday by the regime to tell judge Barreiros to condemn Lopez is not going to change much on the events to come. What it does convincingly is marking the moment where the regime stops gingerly crossing over the line between dictatorship and the totalitarian state. Gingerly no more.

Anything but freeing Lopez would not have improved the international regime standing now at junk bond level. Any condemnation, no matter how short the sentence, was equally unacceptable because a guilty verdict on thought crime is unacceptable in civilized world. Any guilty verdict is the clear statement of the regime that politicians will be dealt with through "crime" sentences to ban them from office. Who needs a gulag when a mere sentence disposes of your opponents for a few years in jail and for a life time once out?

So, why is the regime risking such an international condemnation, even though it does not seem to care about that a bit, as witnesses the Colombian border crisis?

A slow fuse major embarrassment at Foreign Policy

There is an unwritten rule when dealing about information on Venezuela and chavismo: when you try to be objective you always end up with egg on your face. Respected magazine Foreign Policy is feeling the pinch and risks much discredit for its poor managing of a situation coming from a hatchet job text pretending to set the record straight on Leopoldo Lopez.

Is the sentence on Leopoldo Lopez relevant?

No, this is no bait title. Whether Leopoldo Lopez is freed or condemned today has become almost irrelevant for the coming history. As I type this a small crowd of opposition leaders (small on purpose, by the way) is barred from the court building where the final sentence on Leopoldo Lopez is supposedly to be pronounced at any minute. And whatever the result is, even if I learn it as I type, it does not change much the coming text.

In victory we eat

This morning finally Leopoldo Lopez, reported not being able to stand up anymore, has let it be known that he ended his hunger strike and asked that others end their own as well. Too many are heralding the calling for elections a great victory for Lopez, but I beg to differ. A victory it is but it lays elsewhere, associated to Leopoldo Lopez, make no mistake.

Let's look at the "electoral victory" first.

Hunger strike succeeded? Elections on December 6

UPDATED. One of the main petitions of the hunger strikes holding around the countries was that the Venezuelan electoral board, CNE, announces the date for parliamentary elections. Only in Venezuela we need hunger strikes to get what should be a routine date set up that should have happened a year ago!

At any rate after a tortuous press announcement where CNE head Tibisay Lucena attacked everyone for "distortion" of reality when she could have done the announcement on a web page weeks ago she said they would be held on December 6, which was the legal date all along. Attacking Twitter will not save Tibisay from the established charges that she is a mere minister of pseudo electoral affairs of the regime.

And speaking of Twitter the first consequence to be expected:

Listo, la elección es el 6-12. Levanten esa huelga

— Edgar Baptista (@edgarmanuel) June 22, 2015