Caracas Chronicles

Lawmaker Héctor Rodríguez was the spokesman for PSUV yesterday, and once again I struggled to understand what the hell they saw in him to give him that role. Arrogance stands out in a guy with so few narrative resources, because elections are a constitutional mandate and a right, they’re an obligation, not a concession from the ruling party, and even if they believed that, it’s a mistake to remark that rights in Venezuela depend on what the PSUV wants, only because they’re certain of losing.

Chavismo’s priorities, now reduced to CLAP bags with imported products, the OLP’s and a dialogue that will probably never happen, reveal the gap between them and citizens. It doesn’t matter whether the PSUV doesn’t believe that elections are a priority, they’re a mandate. Certain defeat is the reason, the lack of budget is the excuse and scarcity is their way to control how everything plays out.

Nicolás’ signs

Without his liquiliqui, he also made an effort last Sunday to evidence the lack independence between public powers, as he said he had ordered the regularization of the National Assembly. That’s recognizing that there are moments in time where the discretional use of power in the country doesn’t help when you need international loans since oil prices refuse to increase, when those credits depend on the Legislative Branch and desacato (contempt) is no longer useful.

Nicolás also said that the only election they’re preparing right now is for 2018, that dialogue is advancing backstage, that he expects Capriles and El Conde del Guácharo as contenders, just as much as he expects to travel to the Vatican to reactivate the dialogue that hasn’t started. He insisted -someone should train him to be actually threatening, maybe his excess weight drains him of talent- on the illegality of opposition parties, but the truth remains: the Democratic Unity Roundtable is properly registered in the National Electoral Council since 2010 and that registry’s still valid; besides, the TSJ ruling establishes that the parties have until May for their renewals.

Without the own agenda

It’s one thing to see the reaction of American politicians and the media in the face of Trump’s -well-rehearsed- barbarity, and it’s quite another that the opposition keep reacting at every stupidity Nicolás says, as if truth had an audience, as if anyone cared about that more than they care for a kilo of rice. Ramos Allup clarifying that AD hasn’t met with anyone; Jesús Chúo Torrealba talking about lies; National Assembly Speaker Julio Borges, doing what he knows best: “This looks like pure intrigue to create fear.” So the agreements for relaunching the MUD will be announced today, but yesterday they said that they had decided to increase the amount of parties in the directorate, from four to nine; that they’ll have new rules an a project for the country. As if the mistakes they made in 2016 hadn’t been enough disappointment for many, the fact that they’ve taken all this time to say practically nothing about their agenda, their strategy, deeply damages them.

The other Rodríguez

This Monday, Jorge Rodríguez, major of Libertador municipality, said that the government will remain in dialogue mode, that the PSUV supports the (repugnant) document presented by UNASUR’s mediators and that there’s been hundreds of backstage meetings with opposition representatives, warning that this can’t be denied because he has evidence of “when they happened and who was there.”

Meanwhile, his sister (our foreign Ministress) along with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, signed an extension of mutual economic cooperation agreements in areas as consistent as: medicine, tourism, agriculture and mining. Russians are experts on everything, that’s why they’ll support Venezuela in developing nuclear medicine even though there’s an 85% shortage of medicines in the country. To conclude with the respective jalada de mecate, Delcy invited president Vladimir Putin to receive the Hugo Chávez International Peace and Sovereignty Award on September 21th -International Day of Peace. We still don’t know if we’ll have a country by then.

Terrorist actions

Táchira governor José Vielma Mora, denounced that new terrorist actions in the region had been started near the San Cristóbal Catholic University this Monday, remarking that a group of rioters engaged in violent actions, that the Táchira Police was protecting the area because “the violence of the Right is terrible, we have names,” he tweeted. Regarding this matter, journalist Sebastiana Barraez says that the Zamora Social Intelligence Chamber claims there’s a plan called “Grito de Libertad” that will be executed in the entire country and that military security and intelligence agencies are renewing their efforts against dissidents. Check out her article in El Estímulo if you can, because it says that illegal searches and detentions will be performed against opposition leaders and Church ministers considered subversive; soldiers and civilians even slightly related to former Defense minister Raúl Isaías Baduel will be summoned and arrested, among other equally severe barbarities.

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Lara governor Henri Falcón made some foolish assertions in the press release regarding the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. In brief: “With understanding and agreement, we’ll overcome all our difficulties.” Moving. “There’s no such thing as good violence.” Enlightening. “All parties must be willing to find solutions.” We wouldn’t have thought of it. “The mediators recognized by the parties create an atmosphere of trust.” Amazing. “Political prisoners must be discussed in full to solve that situation in the short term, because people can’t be punished for dissenting in a democracy.” Breathtaking!

Falcón stuck to this exercise of commonplace wisdom and proposed bringing one or several Nobel Peace laureates to provide guidance for a successful transition to peace. Here’s a presidential candidate for 2018! -Falcón is a disguise and this has nothing to do with Carnival-