Maduro tries to distract from election fallout
When Venezeulan authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro made the ludicrous pronouncement last week that he is changing the date of Christmas to begin on Oct. 1, it sounded like a bad satire.
“September is arriving,” he said on his weekly TV show, “and so I said, it already smells like Christmas. And because of that, and as a homage to all of you, I am going to decree the early start of Christmas for the first of October for everyone! Christmas has arrived, bringing peace, happiness and safety for all!”
Smells like Christmas? We smell something, too, but it’s the stench of desperation from a man facing international backlash as he clings to power, offering pan y circo — bread and circus — in an obvious attempt to divert attention from the debacle in Venezuela. Everybody, have a party, he’s saying. Forget all that nonsense about stealing the election.
As for his claim of “peace, happiness and safety for all,” tell that to the thousands of Venezuelans imprisoned after protesting the recent round of presidential elections, or the opposition leaders who have had to go into hiding or flee the country to get away from the Maduro regime.
Venezuela has been in a mounting crisis since the July presidential elections. Despite a complete lack of transparency about election results, Maduro has insisted he won a third term as president. That was after the country’s National Electoral Council — controlled, of course, by Maduro loyalists — declared his victory over opposition candidate Edmundo González.
The opposition coalition insists Maduro stole the election. They publicly posted vote tally sheets supporting their contention that the Venezuelan strongman lost by a significant margin. Maduro, meanwhile, offered no such proof of his claim to victory, even though the U.S. and other countries have refused to recognize Maduro as the winner and have been pressuring Venezuela to supply granular election data.
Independent reviews of the tally sheets from 23,000 voting machines by the Washington Post and others backed up the claims of the opposition that González was clearly the winner.
Last week, as the political turmoil wore on, the U.S. ramped things up even more, seizing a Venezuelan plane used by Maduro in the Dominican Republic.
The fallout continued over the weekend, when Maduro’s opponent, González, was forced to flee to Madrid, seeking asylum in Spain. That’s because, hours before Maduro’s jolly Christmas-inOctober announcement, a Venezuelan judge issued an arrest warrant for González, a former diplomat, accusing him of terrorism, usurpation of power and other crimes related to the election.
Repression has risen in this time, too, with at least 2,000 people arrested since the July 28 vote, including teenagers. And all of this is happening against a backdrop of a continuing massive migration of Venezuelans. About 7.7 million people have left the country since 2014, with many settling in South Florida.
Venezuela may be suffering from economic collapse and hyper-inflation, but Maduro — who, according to CNN, has ordered the opening of two new prisons for protesters — knows how to distract and placate: Decree Christmas in October.
The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, the top representatives of the Catholic Church in the country, said on Instagram that Christmas “must not be used for propaganda or particular political purposes.” They noted that “the manner and time of its celebration is the responsibility of the ecclesiastical authority.”
That’s nothing to Maduro, of course. He has pulled this early-Christmas bit in the past, using it as a tool to quell unrest over restrictions during the COVID pandemic and marches led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
This year, with political tensions so high, fauxChristmas is arriving earlier than ever. That means an extended official national period of Christmas celebration — which, in Venezuela, can mean public employees can receive extra bonuses. That may make a difference in the short term but even an authoritarian like Maduro can’t make Christmas last forever.
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