The Chavistas sentence democracy activist Maria Corina Machado to 16 years in Venezuelan jail!
President George W. Bush welcomes Maria Corina Machado, the founder and executive director of Sumate, an independent democratic civil society group in Venezuela, to the Oval Office Tuesday, May 31, 2005. Sumate was established in January 2002 as a non-governmental organization to defend the electoral and constitutional rights of all Venezuelan citizens and to monitor and report on the performance of Venezuela’s electoral institutions. (White House photo by Eric Draper)
A. M. Mora y Leon at Publius Pundit shares this horrible news on the latest outrage by the tyrant Hugo Chavez:
A one-man Venezuelan court demanded 16 years in prison for Venezuelan democracy campaigner Maria Corina Machado. The one-stop-judge/jury/jailer also violated her rights by refusing to allow her to speak in the courtroom as is her right.
The jail sentence he’s demanding is much higher than anyone expected. The politicized judge also demanded to detain her — in an abysmal Venezuelan prison — when she returns to court on Feb. 14.
This doesn’t look good. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is desperately looking for enemies and his actions have begun to sharply escalate as the U.S. becomes preoccupied with Iran, Castro totters in Cuba, Putin in Russia grows emboldened against NGOs, and Chavez’s call for reelection beckons. He’s having money problems and he has squandered the treasury. The infrastructure of the nation is crumbling. Food is disappearing off the shelves, jobs are absent, crime is rampant, welfare checks aren’t satisfying the purposelessness of life without jobs and Chavez cannot make the lives of his political base any better.
Now he is looking for “enemies.”
Hugo Chavez is following the path of many dictators. Dictators throughout history have always shown no respect for the traditional institutions and symbols of their countries and Chavez is no exception. Having renamed Congress, the Supreme Court and even the country itself, which is now officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the regime is currently changing the flag and the coat of arms.
Hugo Chavez continues to show his true colors yet useful idiots remain unaware.
Venezuelan News and Views has more on the story.
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