I’m old enough to still remember when a gaggle of Australian leftists wrote an “open letter” imploring then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to come to Australia. “Chavism”, they wittered, was the latest word in socialism. It’s working this time!
Well, Chavez is long dead, but his successor Nicolas Maduro is still playing the Stalin to Chavez’s Lenin. And Venezuela has gotten the full socialist experience. Right down to resorting to eating their own pets (the children were still safe from the knife and fork, last we checked: let’s be thankful for small mercies). In the ultimate diet plan, the average Venezuelan lost nine kg in 2017. In the next year, they slimmed down a stunning 11 kg.
And, as is too often the way with socialism, Venezuelans are discovering that, while it’s easy to vote in, it’s a lot harder to vote out.
Security forces in Venezuela have fired tear gas and rubber bullets against people protesting over Sunday’s disputed election result.
Thousands of people descended on central Caracas on Monday evening, some walking for miles from slums on the mountains surrounding the city, towards the presidential palace.
Protests erupted in the Venezuelan capital the day after President Nicolas Maduro claimed he had won.
The opposition has disputed Mr Maduro’s declaration of victory as fraudulent, saying its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won convincingly with 73.2% of the vote.
Opinion polls ahead of the election suggested a clear victory for the challenger.
After a quarter century of Chavismo, Venezuelans were clearly determined to vote it out. Even after popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was blocked from running. So, the opposition parties united behind Edmundo Gonzalez.
But, in a result which should seem eerily familiar to folks in El Norte, an apparent electoral miracle in the dead of night secured a ‘victory’ for the socialist incumbent.
A number of Western and Latin American countries, as well as international bodies including the UN, have called on the Venezuelan authorities to release voting records from individual polling stations.
Argentina is one country that has refused to recognise President Maduro’s election victory, and in response Venezuela recalled diplomats from Buenos Aires.
Diplomats from six other Latin American countries – Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay – have also been withdrawn for what Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil described on social media as “interventionist actions and statements”.
Oddly, rather than congratulate Maduro for successfully pulling a leaf out of their own book, or damning the protesters as ‘insurrectionists’, the Biden administration is tut-tutting along.
Speaking in Tokyo on Monday shortly after the announcement was made, [U.S.] Secretary of State Antony Blinken] said the U.S. was concerned that the result reflected neither the will nor the votes of the Venezuelan people. He called for election officials to publish the full results transparently and immediately […]
“We have seen the announcement just a short while ago by the Venezuelan Electoral Commission,” he said. “We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”
Funny, that. A lot of US citizens felt the same way. What did you call them, Tony? “Election deniers”, wasn’t it?
“It’s critical that every vote be counted fairly and transparently, that the electoral authorities immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers without delay and that the electoral authorities publish the tabulation of votes. The international community is watching this very closely and will respond accordingly,” Blinken said.
Yes, he said that with a straight face.
