"Exonerated" (His Honour Judge Nathan Adams, Durham Crown Court, 8 May 2025). Two-time political prisoner. Beaten up in prison, so I fear only God. Activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach".
Monday, 3 December 2007
Venezuela: A Functioning Democracy
In a dictatorship, a referendum does not go the wire, and the dictator certainly does not lose. Rather, he gets ninety-nine per cent of the vote, or something like that. So Venezuela is not a dictatorship. She is a functioning democracy. And she would have remained so if the referendum had gone the other way: Chávez could only have "stayed for life" if the People had kept voting for him until he died.
The vote must have been about 70-30 against the referendum -- too large a margin to steal, despite Chavez's best efforts.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been easily "big enough to steal" in a dictatorship. Anything would be. But Venezuela isn't one. Evidently.
ReplyDelete