Obama wrecks Venezuelan dialogue, Trump will not revive it

{UPDATED}
So here we are, at the famous November 11 deadline where supposedly we should evaluate the advances made by the "dialogue" started on October 30th. Listen carefully for the results, you may hear the crickets.

As a matter of fact, the half a dozen released political prisoners concession from the regime have been amply compensated through new arrests and further limitations to the National Assembly role. And as I said, the mere acceptance of a two weeks "truce" was enough to kill any hope for a recall election before January 10 and the High Court TSJ made sure of that today.

In short, the initial results of the truce seem to indicate that a disappointed opposition following is becoming indifferent as their need to deal with Christmas scarcities start to become more crucial, exactly what the regime wanted. Never mind that the appearance of some obvious divisions have not helped.

This is not to say that the regime benefited greatly. Its own internal divisions have also become more apparent, and the relentless crisis awaits for a mere incident to revive massive protests. Let's just say that the regime got some time for some propaganda that allowed a provisional stop to its own follower hemorrhage, multiplied by a minimum wage inducing inflation and the promise of some cheap toys in a CLAP food distribution subsidized bag.

The regime did get a hand from the US by the way- As soon as the dialogue was open Thomas Shannon from state flew in to Caracas. He met quickly with Maduro and then with the opposition, and left fast. For the life of me I cannot recall an involvement of Shannon with Venezuela that benefited the Venezuelan opposition, or at the very least that benefited it more, slightly more than the regime. Please, correct me if I am wrong. Whatever his reasons to come were, he got at least one thing, no Venezuela blow up until election day. Not that it helped much Hillary but that is another story. At least this Liberal can take small comfort in the loss of Hillary that Shannon will be out of office soon.

The fact of the matter is that this latest Shannon outing is in perfect following of 8 years of Obama basic do nothing on Venezuela, in the grand tradition of George Bush, already hinted at by Bill Clinton. And, I am willing to bet on it, a proud tradition that will be followed by Trump. As soon as he is sworn in he will realize that the US has more serious problems to deal with than the consequences of an idiotic electorate that voted back their country into Banana Republicorama. In addition, Trump enterprises will quickly look at possible hotel development in Venezuela and will realize that the beaches are contaminated, are not private enough, that there is no water nor food nor electricity, and that the personnel has been hopelessly damaged by 17 years of chavismo beggarization. Not even sending now available sheriff Arpaio to solve insecurity could motivate the Trump organization.

George Bush did not touch Chavez because he needed Venezuela oil for his Iraq adventure. That was that- Condi could be deeply insulted by Chavez and barely an eye would bat. Obama did not need oil that much anymore and, well, his interests were in Asia more than anywhere else. Venezuela only came into play when he got into the hubris that he would solve the transition away from the Castro and that he needed Venezuela to pay for it. What he thought to be his crowning legacy not only did not help him to have Hillary elected but will probably come back to haunt him in the ridicule field of fortune. The more so if Venezuela ends in a tragedy.

As for Trump, he did the true and tested Republican Cuban move in Florida. Late in the campaign he went to promise a stern hand against the Castro/Maduro regimes and voila, he got Florida. Probably this time around there were enough Venezuelans that could vote and did it so for him, falling for the GOP cause like Cubans have basically done since the 60ies, for nothing. What does Trump know about Venezuela besides it being a source for competitive ass when he was involved in beauty pageants? Still, it would not be hard for him to do better than Bush or Obama. Hillary on the other hand would have done better because she knew more about Venezuela. She tried to bring Obama around in his first term. And she expressed her opinion during the primaries using against the Bern his inability to condemn authoritarian leftist regimes. Am I the only one to remember that she gave an interview to Globovision when this one was under fire?  Siiiiggghhhhh.......

So there we go, the dialogue as expected will fail because you cannot dialogue with the people that hold you in jail, the more so if they are themselves the felons. And nobody around cares much. From the Vatican to Argentina, they are kind of OK if you beat your wife as long as you do not make much noise.

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Update: as if this were to restore confidence. UNASUR head, totally discredited, untrustworthy, regime supporter Ernesto Samper was the one in charge to announce that they are all fine and dandy but that the results will be announced tomorrow morning.  What is wrong with that?

First, new people joined in tonight. Tonight?
Second, the delays can only mean that they are not in agreement AND that each side itself is not in agreement. Consultations need to be held. We all know that these consultations mean that acceptance is far from certain.
Third, Samper was the spokes person?  Nobody else could risk his good/bad name in front of a mic?

Forgive me if I go to bed without holding my breath. But then again, I could be proven wrong. Hopefully dead wrong.

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Recall Election gone. So what?

I suppose I should write about the annulation of the Recall Election.  I had guessed long ago that it would not happen. The intensity of the dislike toward Maduro is so strong, even among chavistas, that the regime could not allow CNN document the huge lines that would have formed for three days this week.  They had no stomach for that, it was better to use an idiotic legal sophistry and send it all ad patres.

To concur with the prevalent head line this week end that Venezuela is officially a dictatorship is an hypocrisy. I have long said it so and I am actually upset at some people having trying to avoid the D world finally pouting it. As if annulling the Recall Election was more despicable than, say, having political prisoners, forcing those freed into exile, stealing the budget of the nation, and more,

I will just comment on how ridiculous the pretext to kill the Recall Election was. In short, a sub judge in Podunk decided that the CNE had not done its job to vet all the signatures for the 1% collection to start the process. The ridicule, of declaring themselves incompetent through their beloved electoral ministry, CNE, is something they cannot worry about anymore. The obsessive objective is to never leave office. All considerations be dammed.

That is all that there is to it.

Now what?

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So? Can we all agree on the D word?

This is kind of a melancholy post. For years now I have been calling this a dictatorship. It took sometime to start seeing it expressed in the foreign press. And even as I type there are some in Venezuela or overseas (I am looking at you, Zapatero just for today's denialist) that still refuse to use the D word, expecting who knows what leniency from who knows where.


For me the D word applies since Chavez closed Radio Caracas in 2007. Or if you want a more material date you can use early 2013 when the constitutional coup of the moment allowed Maduro to become Chavez successor. And many other moments you may prefer. It really does not matter much, the dictatorial nature of the regime has been obvious from the start, from the very first social program of Chavez "Plan Bolivar 2000" that established the Venezuelan army as a discretionary manager of public money, and thus corruption.

I remember it all. Try me.

This year the dictatorship has been forced to become more frontal, more classical. Until this year the excuse that Venezuela was an autocratic regime and not a dictatorship was that the opposition did manage some electoral victories, that there were still an opposition paper here and there, albeit on trial. Etc. But all those were mere excuses. For the left there was no way that the beloved populist could have generated such a monstrously corrupt and inefficient system.  For the right it was that declaring Venezuela to be a dictatorship would mean taking action for which democrats seem to have lost the taste for, and for quite a while now. The last outrage and successful international take, if I remember well, was against Fujimori who in my book is not any worse than Chavez, and certainly less calamitous for the general welfare of the people. Honduras and Paraguay were mere side shows where the changes eventually prevailed because, well, these changes had a true legal foundation.

But never was Chavez to be sternly criticized until Argentina's Macri made it to office. And yet, with more bark than bite so far.

But now things have become unacceptable and Venezuela is preparing to be suspended from Mercosur in a little bit more than a month while the OAS may suddenly decided to make a concrete Democratic Chart application. Only Erdogan receives Maduro.

Since last December the regime has proceded to the following:
*Using the judicial power to block almost all actions from the National Assembly
*Rule through a state of emergency system bypassing any legal control
*Go through a wave of arrestations and creation of political prisoners without any legal supervision, with "evidence" planted directly by the people performing the arrest
*Sue the last two remaining national daily papers
*Block any control activity that the National Assembly has in the constitution
*Suspend any election, going as far as saying that elections were not an important right
*Dispose of national assets to find fresh cash
*Decree that all remaining private companies must sell 50% of their production to the government
*Etc...... including heavy intelligence insulting propaganda to pretend that all is fine and dandy in Venezuela

But the latest was in my opinion a fatal mistake for the regime. Maduro decided that the National Budget would be approved by decree law, with the support of course of the Judicial Constitutional Court. Now, I am not going to go into the unconstitutional and illegal ways in which the regime decides taxation and how it disposes of the funds through appointed folks.Trust me, the case is clear against the regime.

Since "No taxation without representation", and we know how that ended, it has been the rule in any and every democracy that the budget must be validated by a parliament. Even if that parliament is elected under fraud, but there must be a Parliament Act. Why is such a parliamentary act a requirement? Because it is the contract symbol that the state is the guarantor of the money lent or borrowed. Failure to do such an act means simply that the only responsible party is the guy in charge and that his mere death slipping at night in the bathtub is enough to question whether his successor has any obligation in fulfilling previous commitments.

In short, if you lend money to the Venezuelan government as of today, you have zero guarantee, LEGAL guarantee, that you will ever be paid back (that we are broke and unable to pay our debt is another story, but I digress). And considering that the guy in charge, Maduro, is an ass, with a shaky hold at best, I wonder who will bail the country out...

There are two implications here.

First, obviously, that taking over discretionary disposition of all the nation's income is the most naked act of dictatorship a regime can do. Never mind that in the same ceremony where the "budget" was signed Maduro already decided that he would not give money to any opposition district which by law he is forced to do, even if he has way to deliver less than the survival requirements of such districts. Thus now we are free from having to discuss over and over the dictatorial nature of the regime. All understand money, all understand that Maduro has officially privatized the budget. Even commies understand that.

The second consideration is that we are in big trouble. If the regime has resorted to such an extreme move it is because it feels that its end is near, that too many inside the regime are about to meet their legal destiny in some court. Since it has been proven amply that the regime could not care less about the welfare of the people (starvation cases, distressing lack of heath care for which I can personally vouch for as my SO has been left without chemotherapeutic without the possibility of legally buy it overseas) then it has been easy for them to take the final decision.

By privatizing the national budget the regime grabs directly whatever is left of the country resources to use them to support Cuba and the repression machinery needed to remain in office. That is right, there is not enough money for the rest, it will all be used to sustain the repression and ensuring a minimum of popular support to be able to recruit enough of those that will do that repression. I will note that the forced sale of 50% of production (that will probably not be paid on time, if at all, and after having lost all relevant value due to inflation) represents about what the regime can physically manage in that legal robbery handling, and what it needs roughly for its CLAP distribution system (who not surprisingly in the beggarly nature of chavismo support has allowed Maduro to get back to 30% in polls). Never mind that by forcing such sale the regime acknowledges that all the expropriations made under Chavez have only yielded a cemetery of once food producing businesses.

So there it is, the regime has played its last card.

The regime could not possibly care less about what the fate of the country and its people may be. There is no other card to be played, there is no expropriation that can be done which can satisfy the needs of the people, unless looting of homes is next. Expropriation of banks is useless when inflation is scheduled to be 4 digits next year. Nothing left for populism, not even borrowing as no one will be foolish enough to lend a penny to the the regime now. All has been wasted. There is only the little bit of food produced by the private sector and a worthless budget which can at least pay for the criminals that are needed for public order.

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