The Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela Mess or Let's Place Bets on How Long Before the U.S. Backs a Colombian War With Venezuela

There is currently no plan for new elections - Guaido hasn’t suggested one and the Uruguay / Mexico discussions with Maduro haven’t started yet.

What is clear, however, is that Guaido is intent on removing any possibility that Maduro could run, if he is successful. He has talked about being open to the idea of offering Maduro and colleagues amnesty from criminal prosecution if he steps down immediately - the options would probably be something like exile in Cuba or jail in Venezuela.

I hope we can all agree that one of the punishments for rigging elections should be to lose your electability, right? That's fair, no?

The opposition won the last fair election 56% to 40%, and that was back in 2015. Venezuela hasn't really gotten better since then. In what world does the PSUV stand a chance without cheating?

I’m not going to spend Saturday afternoon explaining Venezuelan domestic politics to someone who has clearly little to no interest in it, but the coalition that won 56% in the parliamentary elections of 2015 no longer exists. The current opposition coalition is a broad church that can unite behind being anti-Maduro, but that doesn’t mean it is going to be able to unite behind a single presidential figurehead - one of the main reasons the main Soc-Dem party left last year is that it was impossible for MUD to agree on who should lead the coalition.

If they can figure out how to have a single viable candidate who can bring together the centre left, liberals, the centre right, the far right, John Bolton, Jair Bolsonaro and enough of the anti-Maduro people who want completely different things to each other, it should be a lock. If they can’t, then a party that can reliablely get 40-45% at national level and substantial majorities at local level, is going to be a threat.

Either way, any approach that cuts a party that can command in the region of 40% out of the process, isn’t going to be able to sustain legitimacy.

teresa may obv

Or Guaido. The idea that we should just continue letting the party that can only get 40-45% at national level run anything is insane to me.

Also, 'can't unite behind a candidate', wasn't the problem that Maduro keeps blocking candidates from being able to stand?

Xp

That’s how it works when you have a multi-party system and a divided opposition. The problem is that there are two radical poles - PSUV and the axis of US-affiliated old money that wants to go back to the 80s - that are stronger than anyone else but lack enough support for a commanding majority. Everyone else, including a fair proportion of voters, is stuck in the middle. You can form alliances of convenience to try and block one or the other from achieving their goals but you can’t get enough people for a decisive path. There is no way that the right, and their international supporters, are going to tolerate a new normal where state ownership, high taxes, an arms-length relationship with the US etc, are on the table even if Maduro goes but there is no legitimate way to reverse Chavismo through democratic structures at the moment, as there are enough PSUV voters, and anti-PSUV leftists, to stop it. That’s one of the reasons that crushing PSUV, jailing leaders, linking them to terrorism, etc, is so essential.

Some form of negotiated solution where PSUV is still involved but there are greater constitutional checks and balances might be a temporary solution if everyone was acting in good faith but it wouldn’t achieve the policy objectives of most of the major players outside of Venezuela pushing the Guaido presidency.

Come on ShariVari, if PSUV had felt comfortable about winning presidential elections, they wouldn't have rigged the last one. And more constitutional checks and balances wouldn't do anything to change the fact that the PSUV has completely wrecked the Venezuelan economy and turned the country into a kleptocracy. How to get out of that without reforms?

The idea that the only people who rig elections are the ones who are worried about losing doesn’t stand up to a great deal of scrutiny. There is no guarantee that they would win a fair election but there is also no guarantee that they wouldn’t - and there are enough people in the country who don’t think that they rigged the last one to make unilaterally invalidating it a huge practical problem. As I said, if the opposition was uniformly after one thing, PSUV probably wouldn’t stand a chance of retaining power in the short term.

Equally, within the left you have a large cohort who blame external agents for creating the economic crisis and another group that believes in PSUV’s underlying goals are valid but ‘Maduro has betrayed the legacy of Chavez’, etc. If the case for completely overhauling the Venezuelan economy, as the US would like, was clear-cut, PSUV would be a niche party. The are too many people who remember what the country was like prior to Chavez with horror to make blindly trusting the anointed son of the US and Brazil a viable option. There is no easy answer to any of this.

The case for completely overhauling the Venezuelan economy is absolutely clearcut, come on. The country is wrecked by hyper-inflation? Clearly something must change?

That’s for the people of Venezuela to decide, but to start with, Colombia, the US and Brazil could stop waging economic war against them. You could almost ask why, if they’re so convinced the economy will fail on its own, they’re so keen to rig it...

Either way, there is probably a decent majority of people in favour of some kind of reform at this stage. What that reform should look like is the question.

SV otm

Fred - now annoying people on three continents.

the man from del monte el hottakeo .. he says yes .. to Trump regime intervention.

Oh come on, sanctions aren't meant to wreck the economy, they're punishments for turning into a dictatorship. Stop playing dumb.

Yes, there’s nothing Trump, Bolsonaro, Abrams, et al like less than a dictatorship. The recent sanctions are a pretty transparent attempt to ratchet up domestic pressure on Maduro by making an already bad situation worse.

It would be much easier to take the US’ actions in good faith as a defence of democracy had they not spent the last 20 years backing coup attempts, pumping money into anti-PSUV groups, etc, even if you did have Bolton on TV saying the quiet parts about oil out loud.

Oh come on, sanctions aren't meant to wreck the economy, they're punishments for turning into a dictatorship.

It would be much easier to take the US’ actions in good faith as a defence of democracy had they not spent the last 20 years backing coup attempts

This is the weirdest and stupidest thing you've written yet. Only 20?

In terms of power politics, whatever policies Guaido favored early on in this struggle, it is inevitable that he would seek the US as an ally and move his policy toward accommodating US desires. Because atm Trump (and Bolton) form US policy, the required level of accommodation will be thinly disguised capitulation. Whether or not this started as a US-backed coup, it seems unavoidable that US greed will seize the opportunity to reshape it into one. The Venezuelan people will be lucky to get out of this without sinking into a puppet government and debt-slavery for half a century.

wait so now you're saying we *shouldn't* take the US' actions in good faith? and yet you were defending the sanctions before?

pro tip: US interventions are never for the reasons we say they are, follow the money

I keep coming back to Alfred's "Maduro is shit, but he's OUR shit" sentiment that was, y'know, expressed by actual people living in Venezuela

this whole situation is radiaating bad vibes from every crevice. it's giving me hives if i allow myself to catastrophize :(
i basically don't trust much of anything the USA has ever done wrt Latin America

radiaaaaaating lol

I keep coming back to Alfred's "Maduro is shit, but he's OUR shit" sentiment that was, y'know, expressed by actual people living in Venezuela

― sleeve, Saturday, February 9, 2019 2:07 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As I said upthread, this is far from the truth. You have competing imperial interests in Venezuelan oil.

Fred you're way out of line.

I never said that! Students living here whose families thread Chavez and Maduro shaped my perspective.

I meant Fred B in case that wasn't clear :)

no, not you, the sleeve quote.

sorry, I thought that was you quoting other people you knew earlier? my apologies if incorrect but I remember the quote distinctly - "he's shit, but he's our shit, keep your nose out of our shit"

I don't think I even quoted it secondhand. Actually, my students want Maduro gone, and I've seen the strange-bedfellows approach b/w the Trump administration and the parents of the students who have no butter or meat.

fair enough, and I apologize again, not sure where I got that from.

I don't think that the "he's shit, but he's our shit, keep your nose out of our shit" mentality would be way off that being said. Even if I, white dude living in Canada, thinks it is not exactly that.

The only goood about Fred's busted ranting is that it has allowed others (and especially SV) to write some informative posts. But ultimately we only need to know because our governments feel the need to poke their nose in.

I hope we can all agree that one of the punishments for rigging elections should be to lose your electability, right? That's fair, no?

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Or Guaido. The idea that we should just continue letting the party that can only get 40-45% at national level run anything is insane to me.

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Who are we to punish Venezuela, or to continue letting a country do this or that just because the news cycle turns around every now and then and decides that something must be done (especially when such poor bad-faith understanding is perpetuated by western media - look at Fred's posting on it and shake your head but its useful to see and what we all need to fight here). The US had Trump elected on about 40%. May is in a minority government in a flawed first past the post system. WE have no right to judge what Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea are up to. This is white, male, western entitlement in western countries that brutalise the poor, migrants and minorities (in the UK = the number of hungry children and homeless, benefits sanction for the poorest, our record and public conversation on trans rights, brutal and humiliating deportation of migrants that have the right to live here). WE have no right.

In Brazil ofc Lula was jailed and stoppped from standing - he would've beaten Bolsanaro. That a negotiated solution should include such a ppl is just nonsense. This is a Venezuelan problem mainly.

Ultimately its a money making opportunity for outside actors - Maduro goes, the movement destroyed. We've seen what has happened in parts of Eastern Europe where the EU tolerates Poland and Hungary who were 'liberalised'. That the EU recognised the opposition is laughable.

It would be much easier to take the US’ actions in good faith as a defence of democracy had they not spent the last 20 years backing coup attempts

This is the weirdest and stupidest thing you've written yet. Only 20?

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is it that you are even saying here? So you recognise there is more than 20 years of coup attempts by western actors - so it should be bad and yet you back more intervention and punishment via sanctions (even though you decry the murder and hunger in Venezuela by backing sanctions that will make a bad situation worse?)

btw don't answer that I don't want to know.

Yes, from context I thought it would be pretty obvious that was a reference to attempts to undermine MVR / PSUV in power from the point of Chavez’ election twenty years ago but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The idea that we should just continue letting the party that can only get 40-45% at national level run anything is insane to me.

LOL, what a stupid statement.

I've just done a Fred, taken a cursory ill-informed look at Danish politics, and discovered no political party in Denmark has won over 40% of the vote in a General Election since 1964.

Tom, Denmark is a multi-party democracy, like Venezuela actually. The current coalition won 51,9% of the vote last election.

Btw, this is basically the central part of what xyzzz is saying: But ultimately we only need to know because our governments feel the need to poke their nose in. It's just a complete disregard for anyone other than ourselves. Narcissism, basically.

Winning 56-41 is a stunning landslide which I basically don't think has ever happened in Denmark?

I don't know anything about Danish politics, you don't know anything about UK politics, Venezuelan politics etc etc - I'm happy not to post anything more about Danish politics, the ball's in your court.

Thanks, I'll continue, I'm clearly better at this than you are.

Making an arse of yourself on ILX? You're one of the market leaders, for sure.

the glorious revolution (choose yr own preferred faction) would no doubt already be in action if fred wasnt in yr sights folks eh

guys wrong itt. plenty shitetalk itt besides him. smells of a pile on.

yeah nerdy p would right there to provide identical takes, nice catch

lol remember when freddie got banned and nerdstrom showed up almost immediately to pick up the "i sure do hate glenn greenwald" shitposting

You can see in Fred's posting why the likes of North Korea had to get the bomb.

Just thank your lucky stars he is an internet film crit writing in Danish. If he had any political ambitions Fred could be dangerous.