Caracas Chronicles

In the era of chavista social lunacy and decay, there’s always one more depth left to plumb. Today, we find out that the Supreme Tribunal is aiding and abetting the wholesale theft of a political party – by overturning the results of PPT’s leadership elections on its way to handing control of the party’s symbols to the rump pro-Chávez faction (PPT-Maneiro.)

That the vast majority of PPT members are lined up right behind their undisputed national leader, Henry Falcón, is neither here nor there. They’ve betrayed Chávez. The might of the chavista state is going to come down hard on them for sure.

And so, I’m guessing we’ll soon have yet another rump party to bring together the defenestrated pro-Falcón faction (Patria Para Los Que Ya No Tienen Patria Para Todos, perhaps?)

Because, make no mistake about it, the centrifugal forces at work in the Venezuelan far left are fearsome: PPT-Maneiro is a breakaway faction from PPT, itself a breakaway faction from Causa R, which was itself a splinter group from the Communist Party back in the 70s. (Juan Cristobal likes to call this game six-degrees-of-Gustavo-Machado.)

The part that gets me is that now that PPT has forsaken Chávez, you might think they would consider going back and rejoining Causa R – especially now that both have endorsed the same damn presidential candidate.

Even more obviously, Podemos and MAS (two more rumps for the six-degrees-of-commiedom game), that split over whether to continue to support Chávez, might as well get back together now that they’ve both agreed the guy is a lunatic. And, stretching things out even a little further, why doesn’t PPT-Maneiro consider rejoining the PCV, 40 years on, now that they both coincide in supporting Chávez?

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, it just doesn’t work that way. The Venezuelan left is expert at splitting up…but just can’t seem to get back together again.