Back to court: multiple jeopardy for Leopoldo Lopez

Always courageously swimming against the tide

Leopoldo Lopez was back in court this morning, to be accused for the nth time for the same offense that holds no ground, no matter which legal angle the regime uses. I have covered Leopoldo Lopez legal problems long enough, often enough,deep enough to have to restart it all over again. That Lopez even won at the ICHR is not impediment for the regime to try once again to try Lopez for a minor offense occurred in 1998 when the regime has dwarfed during its tenure any offense that happened before February 2 1999. Offenses which files by the way keep gathering dust like the ones of Diosdado Cabello.

That they want Lopez  to be tried again should not surprise anyone: this is the country where double jeopardy is applied to individuals (Capriles) and media (Globovision), and where we see even cases of triple jeopardy (Pilieri). In neo-totalitarian systems what matters is not a final judicial decision; what matters is a never ending judicial character assassination which allows for all sorts of propaganda posturing and a scare tactics for others that would dare to follow in the steps and speak up.

The devaluation is retroactive: the great chavista robbery

There is all sorts of economists pontificating about the devaluation and all sorts of politicians talking of "paquetazo rojo" and how minimum wage has lost X% of its purchasing power.  But I do not hear many talking on how the regime is actively bankrupting the private sector of the country by making the devaluation retroactive. And certainly no one in the MUD would be caught dead defending these filthy capitalists which are going to go belly up in a few weeks if the regime does not change its post devaluation robbery scheme. To bad for the workers about to be laid off I suppose....

Diego Arria or the 47%?

I was watching with interest Diego Arria participation in the Globovison opinion talk show "Alo Ciudadano" (1).  He may be infuriating or be considered a Delphic oracle, the point is that he stirs up stuff and gets into necessary controversy within the opposition. Tonight Mr. Arria pointed his guns towards the opposition mistakes in last year campaign, or more exactly on how poor was the reaction of the MUD after the defeat of October and the disaster of December. I am not going to disagree on principle with him since these pages have bemoaned quite often how wimpy Capriles has turned out to be, or worse, lackluster in his creativity. It is not that we are expecting Capriles to take a gun and storm Miraflores, but we could have expected from someone that aspires to become president of Venezuela to possess a better sense of political timing, a more forceful line when confronting the regime. In all honesty he has made progress this year but the damage is done, I am afraid.

Ecuador Correa's success?

I have mixed feelings (surprise!) about Rafael Correa expected reelection in Ecuador. Of course  chavistas call it a success on their side while the Venezuelan opposition, well, it stays silent. Neither one is right.

WTF News and Views?

Segue to my last night post.

Jaua (foreign "minister"): Chavez respiratory deficiency has increased [sic in Spanish, believe it or not].

Maduro ("Vice president"): we have had a 5 hours meeting with Chavez.

Same newspaper, almost same time publications. You tell me.

And it this was not enough, we get from another paper (for a change so you do not think that El Universal is the only one drinking KoolAid) that Maduro was ordered to fight back the economic war. What economic war? They call self inflicted wounds economic war? Maybe Chavez should watch out for Maduro stealing some of his anti pain medication..... Apparently we learned also that Chavez is fit enough to get gossip about what plane Capriles flies to where but he still cannot get sworn in.

As I have often written, it is a good thing that ridicule is not an mass extermination weapon......

Will they dare to swear in Chavez in the dark?

Venezuela is now beyond a joke. The president apparently came back in the wee hours of Monday to Tuesday night. And yet nobody knows for sure. Let me put it this way: by now, Friday early evening, there is no plausible excuse not to have someone credible to witness Chavez presence; there is no excuse not to have a current picture or something.

More importantly, there is no excuse for Chavez not to be sworn in by now.

One can understand that the president may have needed a couple of days to settle in his new quarters. But now it has been three solid days. If it is true that Chavez has enough capacity to take decisions, to sign decrees, then there is no excuse not to perform a sick bed ceremony, private, where Chavez needs only to pronounce a "lo juro", or write it down. The ceremony is simple and can be held in a sick room where we need a daughter holding the Constitution, a delegation of, say, three TSJ judges, a couple of medics, the president of the National Assembly. I am sure that whatever room Chavez is in, it is big enough to contain safely, germ free, that small crowd.

Only two explanations hold.

Chavez is a zombie, clinically dead or something. The photoshops of a week ago would point that way. The regime and it's Cuban pupetteers have not decided yet how to handle that.

The other option is that Chavez is alive but the regime is playing a dastardly sick game towards some undemocratic conclusion. It does not matter whether Chavez is recovering or awaiting the priest, he is allowing himself to be played that way, and the country along. There will be no forgiveness for those who played this dirty.

The organized chaos of Venezuela

For the casual observer visiting Venezuela these days two things must be striking: the chaos surrounding almost everything and the feeling to live in a magic realism novel that not even Garcia Marquez could put on paper. Unfortunately for those of us who live here it is all but too real as well the realization that it was all planned, at least at some point.

We can start by the magical part: the president is/is not back in Venezuela. He is/is not at the armed forces hospital. But he may be/maybe not in a secret compound of Fuerte Tiuna. He is smiling and well with his daughters but Evo Morales, his close ally cannot see him when he visits,  not even through a window, not even through a computer screen. His vice-president has spoken of his forceful voice but the regime spokesperson, ever so proven wrong/or right, says he cannot talk because of a tracheotomy. And more of such contradictions which make it impossible to reach a grand unified field theory on what the heck is going on.