By: José Ángel Ocanto, journalist and former editor-in-chief of the newspaper El Impulso of Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela.
The desire for freedom that springs spontaneously and hopeful throughout the country, especially in the most depressed sectors, which are the vast majority, and even in those previously affected by the regime, cannot be hidden, unknown, mocked, without consequences. .
With barely a month left until the elections of July 28, there is no way, legally and peacefully, that this unanimous sentiment of Change and open repudiation of Nicolás Maduro can withstand electoral fraud, which would have to be colossal, the most gross and unbearable that can be imagined. Of the same quality as the farce that preceded the fall of Pérez Jiménez. (“Let’s go, the neck won’t grow back.”).
And if, despite all the evidence and alarms, the current tyrant dares to deal a brutal blow to the electoral process that he himself brought forward in a disastrous miscalculation, if that fatally happens, no one would be in a position to assure that after such a fraud on the collective will has been perpetrated, nothing will happen here. That we will cowardly and silently bow our heads.
The regime is going through its worst test in 25 years, a scenario unthinkable for them from their impudent and arrogant pedestal. The impotent powerful knows that he is ultimately in disgrace, with no honorable way out in the face of a disaster that he fears is imminent. In the midst of the heavy annoyance that he has spread among the hysterical palace clique, neither sowing fear nor buying conscience works for them anymore. They hopelessly lost all traces of respect and credibility. They can’t find a way to get out of the pit they themselves dug with their lies, theft and crimes. With the sun at his guilty back, the tyrant and his entourage are bewildered, his entire repertoire of tricks has exploded like an infamous firecracker in his unwilling faces.
In contrast to these official shames, on the offended face of a country that until yesterday was resigned, stands the dazzling image of María Corina Machado, personification of a sentiment as pure and irreducible as that of the revived dignity of a people who have grown tired of tolerating the intolerable.
