Pedro González
Journalist
There are still some who are surprised that the Cuban communist regime is still in place and without the slightest hint that the Castro leaders will give way in free elections. There are also those who believe that chavismo-madurismo could be defeated in the next presidential elections in 2024. And even that, in Spain, the Popular Party, alone or with other allied parties, will unseat Sanchismo-communism sooner rather than later.
The Cuban situation is already more than confirmed and Cubans, barring a miracle from some unknown beyond, still have many years left to enjoy the Castro revolution. Spain has its own peculiarities, but the prophecy that the then vice-president of the government, Pablo Iglesias, made to Pablo Casado, then president of the PP, in June 2020, also seems increasingly true: “The right wing will never govern”.
Let us stop now in Venezuela, where long before Iglesias to Casado, the dictator Hugo Chávez warned his deluded opponents that “the Bolivarian revolution is and will be eternal”. The military man always boasted of sweeping successive elections, so that it was always the people who democratically sustained his everlasting leadership. Until he decided to call a referendum, convinced that the constitutional reform that would ensure his indefinite re-election would be approved by the overwhelming majority that had supported him in the eleven previous consultations of all kinds. He lost, but since then both he and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have toughened up the systematic oppression and persecution of anyone who dares to question Bolivarian power with a whole arsenal of measures.
The latest manoeuvre took place this past Monday. The Supreme Court, an institution that like all the others has been hand-picked, Bolivarian of course, did not even take 24 hours to annul the opposition primary elections, which were supposed to produce the name that would face Nicolás Maduro in next year’s presidential elections. Here, yes, the polls were not wrong and María Corina Machado won 92% of the votes cast by the more than 2.5 million Venezuelans who, circumventing all kinds of official obstacles, surrendered to the polls organised by the National Primary Commission (CNP).
According to the ruling of the Bolivarian Supreme Court, “all the effects of the different phases of the electoral process conducted by the CNP are suspended”. The court demands that all the documents relating to the vote be sent to it: the constitution of the polling stations, the ballot books, the tally sheets, the final tally, the final adjudication and the final proclamation of the winning candidate.
This request raises a number of fears. Suffice it to recall the famous Tascón List, where the identity of the hundreds of thousands of signatories calling for the removal of Hugo Chávez from office was recorded. All of them suffered the relentless harassment of those in power: more or less sudden dismissal from their jobs, denied access to scholarships, subsidies or family allowances, banned from public employment, bank account audits and a long etcetera that left no alternative but the humiliation of begging or exile.
That neither Maduro nor any Chavista leader has the slightest chance of winning a fair election is attested to by all the different polls that give Corina Machado a lead of between 35 and 40 points. Hence this manoeuvre, orchestrated in agreement with the Bolivarian judges, at the behest of the well-known congressman José Brito, whom the United States points to as one of the parliamentarians financed by the Colombian Álex Saab, currently imprisoned in Miami where he will be tried for a whole series of crimes committed as a front man for Maduro and chavismo.
Also noteworthy is the willingness of chavismo-madurismo to curtail the electoral process now, just two weeks after representatives of the regime and the opposition, under US supervision, signed the Barbados Agreements. President Joe Biden, in exchange for lifting some of the sanctions on Maduro and the regime, had demanded the conclusion of such agreements and has set the end of November as the date to review and determine whether Caracas is in compliance.
In view of the current manoeuvres, which have been carried out in an otherwise unabashed manner, it does not appear that the White House occupant has many doubts in this regard.
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