Debunking all the Anti-Venezuela Talking Points - Part 2

Going through the arguments of Venezuelan right-wingers

If you haven't already read part 1 where I debunk the first 8 minutes, here is part 1

While I was recently critiquing Pilar Marrero's appearance on TYT, I tried to do a twitter thread debunking most of her other claims on Twitter.  But, this claim requires a little bit more than 280 characters to explain the timeline.  

First of all, if you haven't already listened to it, listen to my chat with Mike Prysner. We cover how the Venezuelan constitution was formed and how it was a real people's constitution.  

2015 Elections

In 2015, the Opposition did win a majority in the National Assembly.  No one is disputing that. Most of them swore-in in 2016 without any hindrance from either President Maduro or the Supreme Court.

Remember, red is the PSUV, and the blue is the opposition

In 2015, 112 members of the opposition were elected. However, on December 30, 2015, the Supreme Court did block 3 members out of 112 opposition members from swearing in, because there were challenges of vote-buying and other election fraud.

 The opposition deliberately ignored it and swore-in those blocked members anyways in January 2016.  Because opposition leaders ignored the ruling and swore those 3 assembly members anyways, the Supreme Court ruled that any decision made by the National Assembly would be null and void as long as these three members were members of the assembly.  They were first required to answer to those allegations of vote-buying and election fraud.  After a few weeks, these rogue assembly members decided to step aside.  If we were to remember US history, President Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to Arkansas in order to enforce Brown v. BOE when the local government ignored orders of the Supreme Court. 

Once these lawmakers stepped-aside, Supreme Court said that the Assembly could continue.  One of the first laws the opposition tried to pass was privatizing social housing set aside for poor Venezuelans who used to live in slums. Soon, they followed up with passing an Amnesty Law  for every act of terrorism against the government since Chavez came to power in 1999.  This article explains the breath-taking offenses for which Amnesty was offered such as: killing people after raising a paramilitary with drug lords to overthrow the government.  

Later that month, the National Assembly tried to amend the constitution retroactively to change the length of the President's term.  The Supreme Court obviously decreed laws can't be retroactively changed. It said they could pass an amendment to adjust the length of the presidential term in the future.

Obstructionism Supreme

In 2016, while the National Assembly was busy pardoning terrorists and trying to change the length of President Maduro's term, the country was suffering from severe inflation. President Maduro brought forth a plan to tackle the inflation, the Opposition rejected it outright. 

By April, the opposition had stopped passing laws.  They were focused on creating a ballot initiative to recall Maduro 

Article 72 of the Constitution allows citizens to initiate a recall referendum on the President anytime they want. The rules: 

1. The organizers for the recall need to collect 1% signatures to create a political committee for the recall. 

2. The political committee needs to get names of 20% of the electorate for the recall. 

3.  For this recall election to be valid:       

a)at least 25% of the voters must show up to vote.      

b). The number of voters who voted for the recall must be greater than or equal to the number of voters who voted for the official in the previous election.    

 c) The number of voters who vote for the recall must be greater than the number of voters who vote against the recall.  

In these situations, there are a snap-elections. But, if the recall is done too close to the next election, then the VP takes over until the next election.

In May, the opposition initiated Step 1 and allegedly collected over 600k signatures.  The election commission randomly checked signatures and found at least 11,000 of them belonged to dead people.  Upon learning this, the head of the PSUV party in the National Party, demanded that all 1.4 million signatures be verified.  

The opposition, of course, could not get enough signatures to gather to create a referendum to oust Maduro in 2016.  

It was the opposition that didn't recognize the legitimacy of President Maduro.  

Please check out part 3 here