Politics

In a Show of Unity, MUD Doubles Down on a 2016 Recall

With a tarima that ran the spectrum, from Henri Falcón on the left to María Corina Machado on the right, MUD announces a protest agenda for the 2016 recall.

Francisco Toro

Over the weekend, MUD stitched together a broad agreement to move forward towards a protest movement for a 2016 recall. Today, they unveiled the key points in that strategy:

We call on the people of Venezuela to massively turn out to the signature collection drive to activate the Recall Referendum in 2016 which has been called for October 26th, 27th and 28th, understanding that our task is not limited to an administrative hurdle but that we must exercise every mechanism for democratic pressure to ensure our will is respected. The true Takeover of Venezuela will take place on those three days. The people will not be stopped either by the miserly number of machines, or by their malicious placement, or by setting a late day. October 26th, 27th and 28th will be three days for the democratic people to take to the streets and impose the constitution and the law.

The communiqué calls for protests every day and all over the country, building to a big rally on October 12th. MUD must understand the cost of previous flops: they have to grasp the heat is on now.

At lunchtime, at Parque Miranda, they came together in a show of unity to display that, indeed, everybody is on board with this strategy. I guess when they go to make a movie about this in a few years, the fact that MUD was having to hold its rallies in a half-completed galpón will look like an embellishment, a bit of a visual exaggeration by filmmakers to try to show how hard-up MUD was. But no.

MUD is wise to underline one thing: any attempt to impose a 20% per state condition on the recall is unconstitutional and will not be recognized. Speaker after speaker hammered this point, starting with Chúo Torrealba:

And for good reason, a per-state requirement would destroy the chances for a recall.

It was quite a sight. When was the last time you saw Maria Corina Machado, Henrique Capriles, Henry Ramos and Henri Falcón together on the same stage?

 

Even Andrés Velásquez is in da house…

Sadly, Freddy Guevara’s video gets cut off just as he’s getting to the good part…

Needless to say, the government prevented the broadcast media from carrying any part of this event live by holding some banal cadena broadcast at the same time. But that’s by-the-by at this point.

The key thing is MUD got the basics right:

  1. Real unity, across sectional splits.
  2. Signing-in-the-context of a Protest Movement
  3. Highlighting the rejection of the 20%-per-state requirement.

Jeez, it’s almost like they read CcsChron or something…

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