Democracy dies in Venezuela

The Washington Post reports:

All this year, as they trudged through an unprecedented economic implosion,Venezuelans have been gearing up for what was meant to be the defining political event of the year: a referendum on whether to recall our increasingly loathed authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro. The tense buildup suddenly ended Thursday as five separate (and supposedly independent, but c’mon now) lower courts approved injunctions to suspend the recall, closing down Venezuela’s last best hope for a peaceful solution to its long-running political crisis.

Even for battle-hardened Venezuelans, it all came as quite a shock. A major signature-gathering drive to officially activate the recall vote was scheduled for next week. Opposition activists were busy preparing their plans to get out their voters to sign. No one, not even the military, seemed to have been expecting this.

This could end very badly. The socialists are determined to hold onto power, no matter how many people starve and babies die. They knew they would lose the recall vote, so they got it stopped.

When a Government can’t be removed through legal peaceful means, that only leaves one other way to remove them.

For Venezuela’s pro-democracy activists, fighting a regime that has instituted dictatorship by tiny increments has been an exhausting ordeal. Which is why today, mixed with the genuine anger at the subversion of our constitutional right to a recall, you can detect just a hint of gratitude for the clarity this brings.

We’re rid of the adjectives. We are finally through with the academic circumlocutions.

There’s no need to hyphenate it anymore. Venezuela is just a dictatorship.

This will lead to more people dying.