The Marriage Between Venezuela and Chavismo Failed

The Marriage Between Venezuela and Chavismo Failed / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez
Posted on December 7, 2015

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 7 December 2015 — This time neither
deception nor fear worked. Like a woman long threatened by an abusive
husband, Venezuela has slammed the door on Chavismo and done so with
determination. From now on, governing will be an ordeal for Nicolas
Maduro. With a party at an absolute disadvantage in parliament, Hugo
Chavez's successor can only impose his presidential will by violating
his own laws.
The people, the same people that the president of the United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV) invoked from the platform to justify his
misdeeds, has said no to 21st Century Socialism and the national project
promoted by the ruling party. A flat refusal against a political force
under whose management the South American nation has been plunged into
insecurity, shortages, corruption and unsustainable polarization.

People are fed up. Tired of so much tense discourse, of fear in the
streets, of the constant emigration of the young and of the instability
that gnaws at everything and that in the last year has gotten worse. The
voters also used their votes to penalize a party that hasn't known how
to govern for everyone, but only for a part of society, which has
systematically railed against those who think differently.

With the tool of the polls in their hands, Venezuelans have pushed
change in a peaceful way, without stepping into the trap of violence or
engaging in an armed revolution. Maduro has reaped, thus, the fruits of
his mismanagement. His declarations prior to the elections, among which
was the threat of fight from the streets if his party was defeated, only
to the determination of a social decision that was already made. With
his words, he finished digging the grave of his own executive.

Because there is a moment when the abused realizes that the abuser is
just another frail human being, someone who can be defeated. That moment
arrived for the Venezuelan people this December 6, as they demonstrated
with their votes that Chavismo is neither eternal nor popular. What
happened confirms the loss of the fear with which a 17-year
authoritarianism had permeated the country, the sick relationship of
dependency and dread with which it wanted to keep its citizens paralyzed.

The election results also go against the Plaza of the Revolution in
Havana. In the dark intricacies of that power that has spent more than
five decades without calling elections, the figure of Hugo Chavez was
molded, and it tried to do the same with Nicolas Maduro. But the move
backfired because it came up against a population that reacted, an
opposition that knew how to unite despite its differences, and an
international community that closed ranks in criticism of the methods of
the PSUV.

The axis financed from Miraflores and symbolized by the political
bravado of Chavez and the mediocre arrogance of the current president,
begins to disarm. Venezuela already sees the way out and drags behind
itself an island that still does not dare to stop the blows of an
abusive government, to close the door and leave it outside the national
future.

Source: The Marriage Between Venezuela and Chavismo Failed / 14ymedio,
Yoani Sanchez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-marriage-between-venezuela-and-chavismo-failed-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/