Thursday, December 11, 2014

VenEconomy: A Totalitarian Regime on the Brink of Extinction in Venezuela?

12/11/2014

From the Editors of VenEconomy

The harsh economic and social crisis in Venezuela is dragging the communist regime down with it, to the point that its agony can be felt everywhere, in each queue to buy food, medicines, or any other basic product or service, in hospitals, morgues, prisons or government offices.

An agony reflected in opinion polls showing the collapse of the popularity of President Nicolás Maduro and his administration, with a rejection rate of 85.7% and one of acceptance that barely reaches 13%, according to a report released by local journalist Nelson Bocaranda in his RunRunes website on Wednesday. The lowest levels recorded in the history of the so-called Socialism of the 21st century.

But nobody should think that getting out of this nightmare is a piece of cake.

Besides not accepting the failure of its economic policies, the Government persists in deepening its control over public institutions in order to ensure the submission of their officials to the interests of the regime. To do this, the parliamentary bloc of the ruling party PSUV has everything ready to give Venezuela’s democratic institutions three death blows once more.

On the one hand, the Judicial Nominations Committee is scheduled to conduct the preselection of candidates running for justices of the Supreme Court (TSJ), so that 12 justices that should fill the vacancies are appointed by December 20. The appointment is made with the approval of two-thirds of the Parliament (110 members), and the PSUV has only 99. But in the case of failing to reach an agreement after three ballots, as expected, it would be done (illegally) with the simple majority of the ruling-party bloc. This way, the "new" TSJ may keep its nine-year record of not having ruled against the Government, of 45,474 judgments rendered during that period.

On the other hand, it has already closed the nontransparent and flawed process carried out to receive nominations for Citizen Power offices (Public Defender, Office of the Comptroller and Attorney General.) A process whose efforts were focused on curtailing the participation of relevant individuals with partisan credentials and independence. The appointment of the three officials should also be ready by December 20.

The third death blow looks to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, to maintain the Government’s abusive grip on the National Electoral Council (CNE), thus keeping four PSUV members against one independent in the board of directors, where it is expected an absence of impartiality and objectivity demanded by the Venezuelan Constitution in the three officials who will fill the vacant positions. In fact, only 96 out of the 245 nominees are "independent," according to local NGO Sumate. It is likely that the TSJ ends up appointing (with the TSJ arbitrarily interpreting a "legislative omission") the CNE directors, if an agreement is not reached with the Democratic Unity bloc (or at least part of it ), because two-thirds of the votes of the Parliament are also required.

This will maintain a biased CNE to turn a blind eye to illegalities, abuses and outrages to be committed during the parliamentary elections of 2015; a CNE that also interprets electoral laws at its discretion and manipulates electoral constituencies so it can tilt the balance towards a PSUV majority in the Parliament.

Even knowing all these dictatorial machinations, it is necessary to get all those young people who will vote for the first time, and where the rejection rate against the communist regime is estimated at 90%, to register in the Permanent Electoral Register, so they’re "ready at bat" when the time comes for the parliamentary elections next year. Only massive voting will be able to stop the consolidation of totalitarianism at electoral level.

VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial, political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982.
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