After Rigged Elections, Venezuela’s Guaido Seeks New Sanctions -

AFTER RIGGED ELECTIONS. Venezuela’s voters did not need 1000+ sworn affidavits on voting fraud—now gathered by Trump’s legal team—to tell them that their own election was rigged. Only 30% of eligible voters bothered to vote in their recent congressional elections. Why vote, when President Maduro had seized control of the opposition party?

The Maduro-controlled Supreme Court had placed the opposition Democratic Action party into Maduro’s grip. Now, with 253 of 277 seats in the National Assembly, Maduro rules every branch of government.

Of course, the US and EU declared the election invalid. They reaffirmed Juan Guaido, leader of the National Assembly, as the legitimate president. But after January 5, without even a seat in the National Assembly, what can Guaido do?

His compatriots in the opposition held an alternative referendum on Maduro’s rule via cellphone apps and in-person polling places. But it stood no chance of taking power from the armed forces which had overseen the “official” polling places. Allegedly, Venezuela has not held an honest election since it started using the Smartmatic/Dominion system under Chavez.

So Guaido seeks a revision of the current international sanctions to try to force a transfer in power. But it remains to be seen what sanctions could further weaken Maduro. The GDP will decline another 25% this year. And hyperinflation has reduced the currency, the bolivar, to one-millionth of a dollar on the free market.

Venezuela’s severe depression has weakened the political resistance, not Maduro’s regime. In other words, with China, Russia and Iran propping up Maduro, sanctions are mostly hurting his subjects. As a result, the nation is sinking to the level of totalitarian misery that we see in North Korea. So we must pray for a way through what seems an impossible deadlock.