Venezuela's María Corina Machado

The very first thing in the dramatic situation lived by former opposition lawmaker María Corina Machado before the irrational and ferocious persecution on the part of the Venezuelan government is to realize we are not approving or rejecting her actions during the past few months. That's what the Government wants; and many members of the opposition coalition, either implicitly or explicitly, have encounter this kind of problem already. What is at stake is (everyone's) right to radically deal with a government that gets rotten by the minute, and that may bring down the entire country with it as well, in terms of the Constitution and the laws. Lastly, let's not forget that she is a figurehead for the Democratic Unity (MUD), an opposition party who we owe endless love. The chavismo movement has politicized justice in such a way that even some dictatorships do it and have done it with a bit more hypocrisy. Even the Supreme Court (TSJ) wanted to turn this aberration into a doctrine at some point. And we all recall with horror when the late Hugo Chávez, in a state of uncontrollable anger, made early judgments on his former presidential contender Manuel Rosales or TSJ justice María Lourdes Afiuni before the entire country. More…