Friday, October 14, 2016

Last Crumbs of Venezuelan Democracy Fading

Nicolás Maduro understands perfectly well that representative democracy entails disagreement, debate, and deliberation, all of which he opposes. So he has announced he will submit his budget directly to the Supreme Court and to a group of hand-picked cronies that he will call a "popular assembly."


As TeleSur notes approvingly:

Venezuelan Present Nicolas Maduro will present the country's 2017 budget, with the input of sectors of civil society, directly to the supreme court for approval on Friday, bypassing the national assembly, dominated by a contemptuous right-wing that is not offering any solutions to the country's economic problems.

This is, of course, false. The legislature--already illegally stripped of a super majority by that Supreme Court--has offered plenty of solutions. They are just being ignored.

For years, elections are what Chavistas hung their hats on. Disagree with us, they argued, but accept that this is what a majority of Venezuelans want. Under Chávez that was mostly true. Under Maduro that has almost never been true. He has ruled primarily by overturning or avoiding election results. 

At this point, there is almost no pretense at democracy.

1 comments:

shah8 11:46 AM  

At this point, I suspect few people in SA (outside of Chile) cares about democratic norms, and only grudgingly mouth the civic rituals involved out of some slight fealty to history.

I mean, I'm still in shock over the Brazil amendment thing. Put together with Uribe's game, and generally? It's hard for me to conclude that democracy is capable anymore of softening naked power moves, much less precluding or altering the actions.

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