Thursday, September 06, 2007

Animal farm

The Chavista Animal Farm or the National Assembly (Venezuela´s congress):



This cartoon is in reference to the desnalgue that happened the other day at the Venezuelan National Assambly (The congress), when they were on the simulate "debate" about the constitutional reform proposed by Baron Hugo Chavez Münchhausen, and some poor souls from the opposition decided they also wanted to participate. The debate was only among the pigs, no other animals were allowed, not only that, but as you can see in the videos, they were asked to go somewhere else to debate (!?).

Weil captured the essence of the Stalinesque allegory novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, the Venezuelan reality version.

Something interesting to say about Orwell, in his wiki-bio:

"In the months after July 1936 there was a profound social revolution in Catalonia, Aragon and other areas where the CNT was particularly strong. Orwell sympathetically describes the egalitarian spirit of revolutionary Barcelona when he arrived in Homage to Catalonia.

According to his own account, Orwell joined the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) rather than the Communist-run International Brigades by chance — but his experiences, in particular his and his wife's narrow escape from the Communist purges in Barcelona in June 1937, greatly increased his sympathy for POUM and made him a life-long anti-Stalinist and a firm believer in what he termed Democratic Socialism, that is to say, in socialism combined with free debate and free elections."


This blogger has stated her opinion about this "debate" many times (also here and here). It´s not gonna happen since the Chavistas are not democratic entities, and the opposition shouldn´t engage in this little institutional game that Chavismo is trying to put to appear to the world with some varnish of participatory democracy.

Venezuelans must be very aware (also here) that once this election happens, and this reform passes (no doubt), we will get rid of basic civilian rights, as individuals and as voters. So, if you think it´s hard for citizens to protest TODAY for civilian rights which are protected under the 1999 constitution, it will be simply ILLEGAL to do it in the future, under the new "reformed" constitution.

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