Venezuelan elections: Not free, not fair

Facing increasingly bleak political prospects, the Venezuelan government sprung another unfair, last-minute trick on the democratic opposition last week: a declaration that a minimum of 40 percent of parliamentary candidates in the next election must be women. Normally, this would be a worthy goal, but the outraged opposition held its long-scheduled primaries last month in advance of the December elections, as the government well knows. The change forces challengers to scramble to find enough female candidates to meet the new requirement. More…