1. The right wing won a majority in the National Assembly in December 2015.
2. Its principal objective since taking its seats in Parliament has been to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.
3. To do this, the right wing took FOUR months debating what should be the method to remove the President, considering at the least, the following:
- Demanding his resignation
- Putting him on trial
- Declaring him mentally incapable
- Nullifying his election because he is Colombian
- Adding to or changing the constitution to reduce his period in office
- Applying social pressure from the streets
- Calling a Referendum to revoke the Presidency
4. Recently, towards the end of April, they decided to open the process of demanding a revocation.To activate the mechanism in April, and not in January which was when half of the Presidential period in office had been reached, the right-wing did not leave themselves the time to undertake the revocation process in 2016, given that the period established by the law for this procedure is more than 260 days.
Carrying out this referendum in 2017 implies that if successful, whoever completes the remaining period of office of the then ex-president will be his executive vice president, that is a ‘Chavista’, who will complete the period of office until the end of 2019.
………..
A STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON repeatedly refused to comment on the momentous political crisis in Brazil during his daily press briefing on Friday — in almost ludicrous contrast to his long and loquacious criticisms of neighboring Venezuela.
When questioned on the stark contrast, increasingly exasperated department spokesperson Mark Toner replied, “I just – again, I don’t have anything to comment on the ongoing political dimensions of the crisis there. I don’t.”
The State Department has long been eager to criticize Venezuela’s left-wing government, which has pursued policies antagonistic to global corporations. In contrast, it has been silent about the takeover of Brazil by a staunchly right-wing, pro-business government that is making the privatization of state industry a priority.
Friday’s exchange began when The Intercept asked Toner why the U.S. has been joining in regional criticisms of Venezuela’s democratic backsliding but has ignored Brazil’s political crisis, where right-wing lawmakers voted onMay 12 to suspend the elected government and open impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.
Watch the spokesperson’s responses below:
Reports in the English-language press last week highlighted a series of small-scale street protests in Venezuela that bemoaned the scarcity of certain basic products, chronic shortages of medical supplies, and continued power and water outages throughout the country. According to Reuters, for instance, more than a thousand such protests occurred in January and February and, taken together, “show the depth of public anger” and “could become a catalyst for wider unrest.”[1] News accounts proclaiming Venezuela’s state of emergency are not new but in recent weeks have reached hysterical levels, with the Boston-based Global Post claiming that Venezuela’s economic situation is now “worse than 1960s Cuba.”[2]
The mainstream narrative explanation is that the crisis is the result of economic mismanagement and the ideological rigidity of the country’s “authoritarian” Chavista led-government. For instance, Andreas E. Feldmann, Federico Merke, and Oliver Stuenkel, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote last November that “Venezuela’s steep recession has been worsened by economic mismanagement leading to mounting inflation, a widening fiscal deficit, and growing shortages of essential goods including food, soap, and diapers.”[3] Similarly, Arlecchino Gomez at The Daily Signal, wrote, also last November, that Venezuela’s recession “was largely due to government incompetence and mismanagement.”[4]
Behind the right-wing revolt in Venezuela
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Caracas is seeing an uprising of the middle classes and the rich. The working class neighbourhoods remain loyal to the government, but also deeply cynical about the extraordinary corruption of the heirs of Chavez. Mike Gonzalez
Anonymous
