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[Cerium]

The final tally confirms the opposition has won a 2/3rds supermajority allowing them to rewrite the constitution.

Venezuela's opposition won a key two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in legislative voting, according to final results released Tuesday, dramatically strengthening its hand in any bid to wrest power from President Nicolas Maduro after 17 years of socialist rule.

More than 48 hours after polls closed, the National Electoral Council published the final tally on its website, confirming that the last two undecided races broke the opposition coalition's way, giving them 112 out of 167 seats in the National Assembly that's sworn in next month. The ruling socialist party and its allies got 55 seats.

The publication ends two days of suspense in which Maduro's opponents claimed a much-larger margin of victory than initially announced by electoral authorities, who were slow to tabulate and release results that gave a full picture of the magnitude of the Democratic Unity opposition alliance's landslide.

The outcome, better than any of the opposition's most-optimistic forecasts, gives the coalition an unprecedented strength in trying to rein in Maduro as well as the votes needed to sack Supreme Court justices and even remove Maduro from office by convoking an assembly to rewrite Hugo Chavez's 1999 constitution.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...sts-dealt-a-blow-as-opposition-wins-landslide

Venezuela’s opposition has won an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections in the oil-rich nation, which is mired in economic turmoil and violent crime.

Candidates for the centre-right opposition seized a majority in the national assembly, with most of the results in, marking a major political shift in the country, which set out on a leftist path in 1999 under the late president Hugo Chavez and his project to make Venezuela a model of what he called “21st century socialism”.

Five hours after polls closed the electoral commission said that the opposition had won 99 of the 167 seats in the national assembly. The socialist party won 46. Twenty-four additional seats were still undecided.

Fireworks burst in the sky above Caracas as election officials announced partial results of the vote, indicating the opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) had broken the dominion the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has held on the legislature for 16 years.

“Venezuela wanted a change and today that change has begun,” said Jesus Torrealba, leader of the MUD coalition.

“The results are as we hoped. Venezuela has won. It’s irreversible,” tweeted Henrique Capriles, a former presidential candidate and one of the leading figures in the coalition.

President Nicolás Maduro said his government would “recognize these adverse results and accept them”.

However, he said the outcome of the election did not mean an end to the “Bolivarian revolution” he inherited from Chávez who died in 2013 from cancer.

“We have lost a battle today but now is when the fight for socialism begins,” he said in a late night address.

Various opposition sources predicted that once counting was finalised, they would win as many as 113 seats. That would give them a crucial two-thirds majority needed to shake up institutions such as the courts or election board.

 

[Chanser]

Yay the bus driver is gone.

 

[TheGamingBox]

Yay the bus driver is gone.

no. he is still president until 2018

 

[Valhelm]

Clue me in.

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment? As a little-s socialist, I find this kind of bittersweet. The Chavez-Maduro regime was so awful that this might be beneficial to the Venezuelan people, but it's disappointing to see a socialist party be so soundly defeated by right-wing capitalists.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

This is awesome.

 

[Cerium]

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ion-national-assembly-maduro-voting/76883170/

If the opposition's Democratic Unity prevails, the impact will depend on its margin of victory. A simple majority in the National Assembly would allow the opposition to set the legislative agenda and possibly pass a law to free political prisoners.

A three-fifths majority, or 101 seats, would empower the opposition to sack ministers and the vice president, while a two-thirds majority, of 112 seats, would allow them to call for a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the constitution.

It looks like they may win as many as 113 seats. If they get that many there can be real change.

 

[Walshicus]

Eh, it's good to see political change as an indicator of the health of a democratic system. Less authoritarianism remains to be seen. Imagine a lot of poor there may be worried too.

 

[Tagyhag]

Clue me in.

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment? As a little-s socialist, I find this kind of bittersweet. The Chavez-Maduro regime was so awful that this might be beneficial to the Venezuelan people, but it's disappointing to see a socialist party be so soundly defeated by right-wing capitalists.

Have you heard our very own Machado's account of trying to get basic necessities or even food? You should be happy, anything is better than the shitshow that was Maduro.

 

[Cerium]

Eh, it's good to see political change as an indicator of the health of a democratic system. Less authoritarianism remains to be seen. Imagine a lot of poor there may be worried too.

If Maduro had tried to rig this one then there would almost certainly have been serious violence; the public sentiment is so completely against him that there's no way you could sell those results as legitimate.

It's not over though.

Even if the Democratic Unity wins, Maduro and his party could make it difficult for an opposition-dominated assembly to govern. The outgoing assembly could grant Maduro special powers, allowing him to rule by decree. Such a decision would certainly be challenged in the Supreme Court, where Maduro’s supporters are in the majority.

“But this will be uncharted waters for Chávismo, and it is hard to know what will happen,’’ said David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group.

 

[VICTORsaurio]

So proud of my people, this is the first time since I turned 18 that I didn't vote, since I moved to Mexico and you can only vote from other countries on presidential elections I think. I really hope there's a revocatory referendum and Maduro has to leave office.

Still this is a great Victory for my country and hope it's the first of many more to come.

 

[jorma]

So Machado is probably the happiest gaffer in the world today. Congratulations to you!

Don't get too drunk celebrating now!

 

[kess]

Clue me in.

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment? As a little-s socialist, I find this kind of bittersweet. The Chavez-Maduro regime was so awful that this might be beneficial to the Venezuelan people, but it's disappointing to see a socialist party be so soundly defeated by right-wing capitalists.

The opposition coalition has multiple democratic socialist parties, if labels are important to you.

 

[Fyrion]

Clue me in.

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment? As a little-s socialist, I find this kind of bittersweet. The Chavez-Maduro regime was so awful that this might be beneficial to the Venezuelan people, but it's disappointing to see a socialist party be so soundly defeated by right-wing capitalists.

Wrong.

MUD is an electoral coalition, and the most popular political parties there are LEFT WING: AD,COPEI,Voluntad Popular, Primero Justicia etc. For Maduro, everyone in opposition are ultra right wing FMI lap dogs.

 

[Chanser]

no. he is still president until 2018

Damn long wait then.

 

[VICTORsaurio]

Damn long wait then.

He could be revoked afte December 2016 though.

 

[Juanfp]

This is great, first Argentina, now Venezuela. Now waiting for the rest of the group to fall.

 

[zero shift]

I never understood how being a bus driver is relevant to the political process. He hasn't been a bus driver for thirty years. His previous occupation is the least of his problems.

Good first step towards getting rid of Chavismo. I hope it doesn't result in right wing government though.

It's really difficult for things to get worse than they already are there. Venezuela should focus on washing themselves from the massive failure that has been "Cuba with democracy" in order to try something new.

 

[ibyea]

Good first step towards getting rid of Chavismo. I hope it doesn't result in right wing government though.

Edit:

I never understood how being a bus driver is relevant to the political process. He hasn't been a bus driver for thirty years. His previous occupation is the least of his problems.

I agree. It's irrelevant, a logical fallacy, and a distraction to the issue of the terribleness of Chavismo.

 

[ibyea]

Clue me in.

Will this mean a major change for Venezuela's economy and political environment? As a little-s socialist, I find this kind of bittersweet. The Chavez-Maduro regime was so awful that this might be beneficial to the Venezuelan people, but it's disappointing to see a socialist party be so soundly defeated by right-wing capitalists.

I am a socialist and I want to see PSUV gone. Believe me, the party and their brand of socialism is no good.

 

[xRaizen]

My mother's side of the family is Venezuelan and I know many of them are coming here to the States to live. It's gotten really bad over there :/ even back in 2013 my brother told me not to delay in closing the car doors getting in or out, due to muggers and thieves. And going out after 9 P.M.? Unless you're with a large group, that's a no-no, you'll risk your life. Taxis? Many of them are corrupt.. And yeah buying things at groceries is hell, having to wait in line for hours and hours to get a CHANCE of buying the thing you want, it's not even guaranteed.

 

[Log4Girlz]

They're going to throw him under the bus

 

[Glasshole]

They're going to throw him under the bus

Love it.

 

[itxaka]

Have you heard our very own Machado's account of trying to get basic necessities or even food? You should be happy, anything is better than the shitshow that was Maduro.

I dont understand why you guys keep pointing to maduro as the sole culprit of this.

Venezuela is fucked up, but its not only maduro the cause for it. It goes much deeper than that. I hope that when he goes away things start to get better, but its not gonna suddenly become an awesome country for all its citizens. They have much deeper problems that maduro being a fucking idiot.

 

[trembli0s]

I dont understand why you guys keep pointing to maduro as the sole culprit of this.

Venezuela is fucked up, but its not only maduro the cause for it. It goes much deeper than that. I hope that when he goes away things start to get better, but its not gonna suddenly become an awesome country for all its citizens. They have much deeper problems that maduro being a fucking idiot.

"Much" deeper? It's been my understanding from reading the Food Distribution thread that most of the current problems were due to the implementation of Chavismo. As soon as the oil market bottomed out there was simply no way to keep greasing everyone's palms.

 

[Corronchilejano]

I dont understand why you guys keep pointing to maduro as the sole culprit of this.

Venezuela is fucked up, but its not only maduro the cause for it. It goes much deeper than that. I hope that when he goes away things start to get better, but its not gonna suddenly become an awesome country for all its citizens. They have much deeper problems that maduro being a fucking idiot.

Well, with oil prices hitting rock bottom it's pretty obvious they need to buff national production to be less dependent on imports while getting all pretty for foreign investments.

In short, undo everything that the chavismo fucked up. Except giving their oil industry to foreign companies.

 

[Bregor]

Falling oil prices could have been planned for, and in fact, were planned for. The trouble is Venezuela didn't stick to that plan. If they had the collapse of oil prices would not have had such a devastating impact on the country.

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/20...se-has-nothing-to-do-with-falling-oil-prices/

And of course, there are other decisions that were even more disasterous to their economy, but I'll let others get into them.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

If Maduro had tried to rig this one then there would almost certainly have been serious violence; the public sentiment is so completely against him that there's no way you could sell those results as legitimate.

It's not over though.

That's a pretty terrible constitution if it allows that.

 

[FuuRe]

So Machado is probably the happiest gaffer in the world today. Congratulations to you!

Don't get too drunk celebrating now!

Yeah, that was the first thing i remembered reading this, hope the dude is OK and hopefully this means significant changes for all the people in Venezuela, Maduro has always been an asshole and nothing more then a half assed attempt to copycat Chavez, that said, Chavez was an asshole too.

Permaban Maduro in 2018

 

[Kenshin001]

This is good news on two fronts. It's a victory for democracy when it could have easily degenerated into bloodshed and repression. Credit to Maduro for abiding to those democratic principles. It is also hopefully an end to the nightmare many Venezuelan people have endured under an incompetent government. There is something fundamentally wrong when in an oil rich country people have to wait in lines for basic goods.

 

[Leopold]

Gold! Latin America is getting rid of socialism. Hopefully Brazil is next in line.

 

[jett]

Maduro is obviously too stupid to rig elections. I wonder if he's capable of a true blue self-coup.

 

[malingenie]

Best Monday Ever. I will only show my love in this thread and avoid it. Because if I see one of those specific american gaffers posting that this is a capitalistic onslaught to the masses I will lose my boner. But hear me well... this is a good thing. The world is not black and white and Venezuela just got a nice shade of gray!

 

[Ahasverus]

That guy is sl coming down, and I'm enjoying it.

 

[noshten]

But I thought Venezuela was a dictatorship with no legitimate elections?

 

[FuuRe]

Gold! Latin America is getting rid of socialism. Hopefully Chile is next in line.

FTF

Spoiler

me

 

[zero shift]

"Much" deeper? It's been my understanding from reading the Food Distribution thread that most of the current problems were due to the implementation of Chavismo. As soon as the oil market bottomed out there was simply no way to keep greasing everyone's palms.

To be fair this isn't the first time Venezuela put all of its eggs in one basket. It has bet solely on oil before and lost heavily as well. In fact I think that possibly had something to do with Chavez eventually coming into power. Venezuela needs to work on production and not rely on oil as its sole cash cow.

But I thought Venezuela was a dictatorship with no legitimate elections?

Elections are free in Venezuela...but not fair...at all. The PSUV does every thing in their power to suppress opposition voters. Block opposition campaign ads, cracking down on "biased" media, flatout jailing politicians for calling the party out on their bullshit, allowing gangs that are flamboyant toward the government to intimidate voters at the both, curb the power of elected officials when elected, gerrymandering, etc.

There is much more to a healthy democracy than an accurate count of votes.

FTF

Spoiler

me

I thought you were left wing going by your post history?

 

[Fandangox]

I dont understand why you guys keep pointing to maduro as the sole culprit of this.

Venezuela is fucked up, but its not only maduro the cause for it. It goes much deeper than that. I hope that when he goes away things start to get better, but its not gonna suddenly become an awesome country for all its citizens. They have much deeper problems that maduro being a fucking idiot.

Yeah, even with he "right" people in charge is going to take a lot of time for the country to stabilize itself.

 

[Lautaro]

FTF

Spoiler

me

Pfff after Piñera's government is clear that left and right are pretty much the same in Chile, hard to compare our country's situation with Venezuela.

 

[trembli0s]

To be fair this isn't the first time Venezuela put all of its eggs in one basket. It has bet solely on oil before and lost heavily as well. In fact I think that possibly had something to do with Chavez eventually coming into power. Venezuela needs to work on production and not rely on oil as its sole cash cow.



Elections are free in Venezuela...but not fair...at all. The PSUV does every thing in their power to suppress opposition voters. Block opposition campaign ads, cracking down on "biased" media, flatout jailing politicians for calling the party out on their bullshit, allowing gangs that are flamboyant toward the government to intimidate voters at the both, curb the power of elected officials when elected, gerrymandering, etc.

There is much more to a healthy democracy than an accurate count of votes.



I thought you were left wing going by your post history?

I don't doubt that at all to be honest with you. But when the fields were so easy to access and made so much money when oil is high, it's tough to blame a 3rd world country from focusing solely on that.

Hopefully, this opposition government wisely invests and partners with the Majors in order to bring production stability while investing the profits into the state in productive ways.

 

[FuuRe]

I thought you were left wing going by your post history?

Curious thing you say, care to point me to these posts?

Also, I align with no one but my country

Pfff after Piñera's government is clear that left and right are pretty much the same in Chile, hard to compare our country's situation with Venezuela.

I agree with you on your left vs right statement and i want to say to you that i'm not comparing Chile to Venezuela, that would be idiotic.

I don't want to derail but given all the things we have been experiencing lately as a country (Davalos, SQM, Penta, Novoa, etc...) my heart is on a new politic front willing to take the establishment out of their place, this sounds utopic but i have no trust left in the major politic fronts and parties, so i won't play dumb (Like Vallejo and Jackson telling everyone that they won't support Bachelet and then making the u-turn) and rest my hopes with rotten political blocks trying to brainwash the society with their "we're the good guys and they don't" bullshitty verbal sheep skin.

Hooray for Venezuela, hopefully this change will be for the good of the country.

 

[cacildo]

Good first step towards getting rid of Chavismo. I hope it doesn't result in right wing government though.
.

Sorry but this is exactly what will happen

 

[Aureon]

So, what happens now?
It's going to be pretty hard to dig a petroeconomy out of the hole with oil under 40 =\

 

[God Dayumm]

So, what happens now?
It's going to be pretty hard to dig a petroeconomy out of the hole with oil under 40 =\

I'm sure Venezuela can get foreign investment in other industries if they facilitate it. The question is, if Venezuelans will want to move on this direction

 

[KDR_11k]

This is good, when you fuck up so bad that the population lacks basic goods without being in a war then you really need to be booted out of office.

 

[malingenie]

I am a socialist and I want to see PSUV gone. Believe me, the party and their brand of socialism is no good.

I am also socialist leaning (northern-europe socialism) and while i get why it sounds great to the disenfranchised, this brand of socialism is shit.

 

[Cerium]

The final tally confirms the opposition has won a 2/3rds supermajority allowing them to rewrite the constitution.

Venezuela's opposition won a key two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in legislative voting, according to final results released Tuesday, dramatically strengthening its hand in any bid to wrest power from President Nicolas Maduro after 17 years of socialist rule.

More than 48 hours after polls closed, the National Electoral Council published the final tally on its website, confirming that the last two undecided races broke the opposition coalition's way, giving them 112 out of 167 seats in the National Assembly that's sworn in next month. The ruling socialist party and its allies got 55 seats.

The publication ends two days of suspense in which Maduro's opponents claimed a much-larger margin of victory than initially announced by electoral authorities, who were slow to tabulate and release results that gave a full picture of the magnitude of the Democratic Unity opposition alliance's landslide.

The outcome, better than any of the opposition's most-optimistic forecasts, gives the coalition an unprecedented strength in trying to rein in Maduro as well as the votes needed to sack Supreme Court justices and even remove Maduro from office by convoking an assembly to rewrite Hugo Chavez's 1999 constitution.

 

[VICTORsaurio]

Last night Maduro spoke on his TV show and started complaining like a spoiled child about how people betrayed him. He said he wanted to build 500.000 new houses next year but he's not so sure now because he asked for support and he didn't get it. As if it was a favor he was doing to the people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmsQm05-Zto

Also he read a tweet that told him to "suck it".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6kUhQlTIEk