Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: So, did you hear the one about the abstentionist leader who morphed seamlessly into a spokesman for a movement named after an election?

No, it’s not a bad joke, it only sounds like one.

Watching Movimiento 2D’s solemn declaration of dictatorship at that press conference yesterday, I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d stepped through a gash in the space-time continuum and been dropped straight back into the bad old days of unhinged, reactionary elite driven oppo maximalism.

The national emergency tone, the pitch aimed straight at the NDRoots, the sheer self-importance…it was all there. And of course, no podía faltar the bow towards the altar of Article 350. Which was a dead giveaway: it’s an Iron Law of Venezuelan Politics that whenever an opposition leader utters the words “tres cientos cincuenta”, what follows is a torrent of onanistic bullshit.

And another thing: what sense does it make for a newspaper owner to co-sign a comuniqué? Newsflash, Miguel Henrique: signing comuniqués is the sort of thing we mortals have to do so people like you take notice and publish our stuff. If you were so determined to inflict this cretinous tirade on us, all you had to do was send your jefe de redacción an email.

But I digress. What grates is his whole preening demeanor, this prima donnaish pose where you stand in front of some microphones and ponderously declare that, ahora sí, we’re in a dictatorship. And expect that to have some kind of effect. ¡A estas alturas del partido!

The guy needs Laureano Márquez to set him straight:

The country isn’t headed towards a collision; we’ve been picking up bits of broken glass and spreading ointment on the black and blues from the blows received for ages already, to say nothing of the blows to come. The collision already happened. The blows are coming from the other car’s driver – he hits us with a wrench wrapped in judicial velvet, to avoid leaving a trace. The country isn’t slipping out of our grasp, it’s been beyond our reach for ages.

(Whodda thunk, a few years ago, that advice penned for General Baduel would come to fit like a glove when re-encauchated for M.H.Otero’s benefit?)