In Nicaragua, we know what it means to leave the oppressors unpunished and to falsely close dark periods of our history.
By Silvio Prado (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – The irrefutable (and massive) evidence that an overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan people defeated the Maduro dictatorship on July 28 has placed the democratic governments of the world before a challenge that has an easy solution. If they want to remain true to the principles and standards by which they supposedly govern themselves, they must uphold the sovereign will of the Venezuelans. There is no room for dilemmas, alternative paths, or intermediate solutions. For Venezuela, what should apply is the same as what any democratic leader would want for their own countries. Freedoms do not admit double standards or complicit relativism.
Given the irrational reactions of the Chavista regime to the electoral results, one must ask what they expected from the elections. In line with other authoritarian electoral regimes, did they expect to manipulate the electoral system to legitimize their apparatus of domination before the international community? If so, they failed. On the contrary, their antidemocratic nature has never been so clear before the eyes of the world, except to other tyrannies.
Under Maduro’s leadership, Chavismo has reached its highest levels of mediocrity by failing, after three weeks, to even produce manipulated vote tally sheets or any other farce of the sort. Three weeks later, the absence of documented results has become the elephant in the room that no one, not even their most shameful accomplices, can ignore. Instead, this botched effort has transferred all the moral and political strength to the opposition, which has been able to present its copies of the tally sheets for national and international public scrutiny.
Did they perhaps expect the opposition forces to retreat to lick their wounds? Here too, Maduro’s calculations have failed; the knowledge of being strong,