You’ve seen the news reports: the protests in the streets, the long lines at the stores.
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On Tuesday, lawmaker Freddy Guevara made the same vow much more dramatically. But he did not specify whether his company’s figures showed 1 million fewer, or 1 million more, voters. “The next steps are for the global community to press the Venezuelan regime to make changes and cancel the (election) results and revoke whatever happened, to move forward”. Due to plunging oil prices and widespread corruption and mismanagement, Venezuela’s inflation and homicide rates are among the world’s highest, and widespread shortages of food and medicine have citizens dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through trash to feed themselves. They were taken by the Venezuelan secret police Segin, and their whereabouts are unknown.
“My position has always been the same, for five, 10 years, two years”, Ortega said. Already the Venezuelan government is taking steps to put as numerous opposition in prison as possible.
In a statement, the Supreme Court said protest leader Leopoldo Lopez and Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma were sent back to prison because they had violated the terms of their house arrest by making political statements. “Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ledzema are political prisoners being held illegally by the regime. we reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners”.
Opposition leaders said counts from observers stationed in each municipality also suggested the government’s numbers were inflated.
The assembly was initially scheduled to commence work on Thursday, but Maduro postponed the launch to Friday in the face of opposition plans for widespread protests. More than 100 people have been killed.
In a letter, he said that following the “unjustified arrests” of opposition leaders Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez, he would like to consider “freezing assets and imposing travel ban to the European Union to the members of the Venezuelan government including its President Nicolas Maduro and its entourage”.
Further sanctions are also being considered by the United States, likely targeting the country’s oil industry.
“There is absolutely no check on executive power (in Venezuela)”.
“We’re given the impression an entire country is against the government”.
Latin American dictators love to rail against the United States.
Venezuela has used electronic voting machines for more than a decade.
Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program. All of Maduro’s assets in the USA have been frozen and Americans are forbidden from doing any business with him.
“It’s important for the USA to play an active role in Latin America so that democratic backslidings like this won’t happen again”, Perera said.
Yet analysts agreed that Maduro’s move had swept away any vestige of democracy in Venezuela.
Venezuela is on the brink of economic collapse and 80% of Venezuelans disapprove of the management of the president, according to the institute of polls from Datanalisis.
Pompeo’s statement sparked an understandable outcry in Caracas, with Maduro slamming the US, Colombia and Mexico alike. Venezuela can’t pay to import goods because its government is desperately strapped for cash after years of mismanagement. “I think there were ten million Venezuelans who went out”.
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Washington added Maduro to a steadily growing list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials targeted by financial sanctions, escalating a tactic that has so far failed to alter his socialist government’s behavior. Its humanitarian crisis would worsen.
