Analysis from John Suarez in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:
All eyes on Venezuela: Maduro regime pushing to consolidate dictatorship
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986
Venezuela is a dictatorship and has been one for sometime. What is taking place now with escalating regime violence ( over 100 dead in nonviolent protests) and the centralization of power in the executive is the consolidation of the dictatorship. Democracy and the rule of law departed some time ago. The Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights [Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos] PROVEA over twitter on October 23, 2016 stated it plainly: “It is not a time of silence or inhibitions, but of defending the Constitution and democracy against the dictatorial and authoritarian outburst.”
Venezuela’s most important human rights organization, PROVEA, on October 23, 2016 declared that the Maduro government had broken with the Constitutional order and from October 20, 2016 on could be considered a full blown dictatorship. Below is PROVEA’s reasoning.
The Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights (PROVEA) is an organization that has gained respectability for its 28 years of existence due to the credibility of its analyzes and denunciations. With the seriousness and responsibility that characterizes us, we share the following position to public opinion: Following the illegal suspension of the process of the realization of the recall referendum, ratifying the absence of independence of the powers in the country, the government of Nicholas Maduro should be described as a dictatorship. We are not in the presence of simple delays of the process, but of the interruption and obstruction of any electoral process as long as the government can not obtain favorable results in the polls.
Venezuela is in agony and on the brink of completing its transition into a full blown totalitarian dictatorship. On Sunday July 30, 2017 the Maduro regime will conduct a sham vote to empower a pro-Maduro body with the power to eliminate the legislative assembly dominated by the opposition.
Continue reading HERE.
And to think this horrible mess, all of it, could have been avoided if only Venezuelans had employed the most elemental common sense and had passed on Hugo, the ape who loved Nosferatu. Lord have mercy.