Caracas Chronicles

Some parents struggle to make their kids eat their vegetables. Broccoli, they say, is a real challenge and the trick is to dip the tree-shaped demon in melted cheese. It’s yummier in a single step.

MUD has done more or less the same with our Consulta Popular.

Here’s the third question everyone said yes to on sight:

The event was advertised, and is still reported, as a way to reject the Constituent Assembly Maduro is trying to impose without our approval. That part went great, and it was by far the most inspiring protest I’ve ever participated in.

Maduro is the president only because we all agree that he is. So let’s not. Let’s say the head of the National Assembly is the president now.

That’s the cheese. How about the broccoli we just munched without noticing?

The opposition just asked for our permission to really stretch that article 350 and create a new government, and the only explanation we have so far are these three lines of text.

So, we’re not only not recognizing the current administration in accordance to article 350, we will also recognize the one they eventually appoint as the legitimate one.

If you think about it, Maduro is the president only because we all agree that he is. So let’s not. Let’s say the head of the National Assembly is the president now. That’s how a “government of national unity to restore constitutional order” sounds to me.

This is where the law ends. If we have two people for the same post, there’s no mechanism to tell us which one is actually legal. A while back the government blocked out all the strictly legal options, and it’s time to go into uncharted territory.

MUD admits today's move very risky. A parallel state in Ukraine, Syria hasn't worked out great. But they say escalation is all they got left

— Anatoly Kurmanaev (@AKurmanaev) July 17, 2017

Our vote, our broccoli, was really important. Without it, the international community wouldn’t recognize a new authority, thinking our opposition just went rogue. We told the world, through the biggest protest in our history, that yes, we would go there. That we know what’s coming, and we’re into it.

If the opposition goes through with it, politics in Venezuela are about to get weirder.