OPINION
Back in the heady days of the 2000s, the cream – or should that be “the scum” – of the Australian left were really fangirling over Hugo Chavez, then-president of Venezuela. So besotted were they by their new socialist strongman Big Daddy that they penned an open letter begging him to come to Australia.
They went very quiet very quickly.
Since Chavez shuffled off to the Big Collective in Hell, they’ve been even quieter about his successor, Venezuela’s very own “Baby Doc”, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro, as socialists will, is angling to make himself dictator-for-life, even as Venezuelans keep on eating their own pets to survive. In response, the US is re-imposing its oil embargo on the failed socialist state (a tautology, I know).
Although, it must be said, there is no small irony in the Biden administration punishing other countries for stuff like this:
Maduro went on to schedule an election for July and invited international observers to monitor voting, but his inner circle has used the ruling party’s total control over Venezuela’s institutions to undermine the agreement.
Actions include blocking his main rival, ex-lawmaker Maria Corina Machado, from registering her candidacy or that of a designated alternative. Numerous government critics have also been jailed over the past six months, including several of Machado’s aides […]
Opinion polls show most Venezuelans would eagerly boot Maduro from office if given half a chance.
The Guardian
Preventing the opposition candidate from registering? Jailing government critics? A groundswell of discontent against the incumbent?
Maduro is behaving exactly as you’d expect a socialist dictator to: rounding up ‘dissidents’, even YouTubers.
A popular Venezuelan YouTuber has been arrested in Caracas on terrorism charges as President Nicolas Maduro’s government steps up its crackdown on free speech ahead of upcoming elections.
Oscar Alejandro Peez was detained in the capital’s main airport on Sunday by police on accusations of terrorism, his family said.
Terrorism?
Venezuela’s government has increasingly used “terrorism” as a catch-all-term to jail opposition figures, rights observers and researchers in recent months. The accelerating crackdown is an attempt to silence all political discussion through intimidation ahead of elections expected for July, rights groups say […]
Though based in Miami, Perez has spent more time in Venezuela in recent years, highlighting the country’s natural beauty but also the reality of its economic collapse by showing empty resorts, supermarket shelves and gas stations.
The Guardian
How many opposition candidates can the socialist dictator (Maduro, that is, not Biden) ban from the ballot? When Machado was banned from running, the opposition quickly found a replacement.
Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old philosopher, was little-known outside academic circles until last Friday, when she was catapulted on to the frontline of Venezuela’s long-running political crisis by being named as the substitute for Maria Corina Machado, a prominent opposition figure who had been banned from running in the election.
Members of the opposition had hoped the octogenarian grandmother of seven might prove an unconventional yet effective adversary capable of discombobulating the 61-year-old Maduro, who has held power since becoming president after Hugo Chavez’s 2013 death. Maduro’s re-election, in 2018, was widely denounced as an illegitimate farce by western governments.
And just as quickly as they pop up, Maduro’s henchmen play electoral whack-a-mole.
However, on Tuesday, Yoris – the unity candidate for an alliance known as the Unitary platform – said she had been unable to register her candidacy on the electoral council’s online system before a midnight deadline.
The Guardian
Have they tried hitting her with a slew of trumped-up, kangaroo-court charges?
Or is that sort of stuff just for El Norte?