VenEconomy: Winning the Upcoming Parliamentary Election is No Joke for the Government of Venezuela 
 From the Editors of VenEconomy
Latin American Herald Tribune
November 10, 2015

As a parliamentary election to be held on December 6 nears, opinion polls continue to show the increasing popular rejection towards the government of Nicolás Maduro.

At the same time, the machinery of the State continues to oil itself with all kinds of machinations, dirty tricks and arbitrariness, breaking every law and democratic standards. Once more the totalitarian and fascist nature of the Bolivarian regime is imposed, whose representatives aim to remain in power "whatever it takes." That is to say, through blackmail, bribery, threats, attacks and persecuting those opposing them.

The preparatory stages for an adequate electoral field to impose the candidacies of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) have been completed (with success), among others:

1) The arbitrary and illegal disqualifications of candidates from the opposition, and some dissidents from the PSUV, for the Parliament with proven leadership in their respective regions.

2) An indefinite state of emergency and suspension of constitutional guarantees in most municipalities on the Colombia border, in violation of the Constitution with the approval of the Supreme Court (TSJ). A measure that curtails among other rights the mobilization and electoral campaigns of candidates for lawmakers in these municipalities, and that may also curtail the right to vote of hundreds of citizens.

3) The intervention by the TSJ of opposition parties COPEI and Movimiento de Integridad Nacional (MIN-UNIT), a move that, taking advantage of internal rifts, seeks to infiltrate "Trojan horses" as candidates of the Democratic Unity (MUD) opposition electoral coalition.

4) Then the National Electoral Council (CNE) tries to create confusion by putting MIN-UNIT right next to the MUD on voting cards, both of which emphasize the word "unity."

5) All 14 previous audits to the electoral process were "successfully" passed: the representatives of the opposition did not acknowledge in writing a single observation or criticism made by them of any of the resources, materials, technology and data to be used during the parliamentary election, which certainly will serve again as an endorsement in case of complaints after the fact.

6) Not allowing independent international observation, but the accompaniment of a mission of 50-60 people from intergovernmental regional organization UNASUR.

7) The organization of 71 armed groups that will serve as "guardians" of the voting centers. These groups have already made demonstrations of their force with attacks on police headquarters in some municipalities, using weapons of war (such as grenades) on which CAVIM (the national corporation owned by the Ministry of Defense in charge of developing the national military industry) has a monopoly on production, import and distribution. As well as the attacks on candidates to lawmakers from the opposition during public mobilizations, such as the case of Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, who was shot at by pro-government groups last Sunday to prevent him from carrying out a tour in Valles del Tuy (a sub-region of Miranda state); and María Corina Machado, who was also attacked in Coro (Falcón state) by violent groups that identified themselves as supporters of the PSUV.

And if that wasn’t enough impudence and impunity, now the Government will go further still. Now the order is to search – and find – votes anywhere and anyhow. That’s how the Government has disrupted the normal process of partisan mobilization during electoral times with the so-called "1 for 10," where each party activist tries to convince 10 for the PSUV electoral option, a coercion and extortion mechanism being applied in every ministry or public entity.

A fine example of this is a terrible video leaked into the social networks a couple of weeks ago, in which Maj. Luis Eduardo Machado Quintero, rector of the National Experimental Polytechnic Bolivarian National Armed Forces University (UNEFA), is seen ordering the professors of this higher education institution to go get 1,300,000 votes for the candidates of the ruling party. Quintero, like any apprentice of Adolf Hitler, was heard saying: "I have 375 professors… and I have ordered them, not asked them a favor, to do the 1 for 10 for me. Each professor will oversee five of their students, and these five students will be doing their 1 for 10 as well." Quintero lets them know that they will be directly supervising all professors, including the dean, because UNEFA is "a socialist university," "is the commander Hugo Chávez’s little girl"… and that is no joke.

But, as Leonardo Padrón, a famed local screenwriter and TV producer, put it in a column published by daily El Nacional entitled "Who Said Fear?": "By tradition, only the one threatening me feels like a loser."

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