The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 9

Good morning! And welcome to the latest edition of VenOpIronía, in which we find out that the Venezuelan opposition is now so Bolivarian, so very Chavista, that it is now doing exactly what it always (falsely) accused the Bolivarian, Chavista government of doing. Guess what that is…

Not asking questions of the right-wing candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, is apparently the principal requisite which the media who wish to cover him must fulfill during press conferences given by the presidential aspirant in various parts of the country.

So says the newspaper, Diario El Tiempo de Trujillo, which was allowed at a press conference on Tuesday on the condition that they not ask questions of the candidate.

With a communiqué signed by the president of the paper’s editorial staff, José Luis Mazzari Velasco, and published on a full page of the paper, they announced their decision ot to cover the activity, owing to the fact that “they invited us to a press conference where we were not allowed to ask questions.”

For the paper, the right-wing candidate’s activities inhibit freedom of expression.

On March 13, the minister for Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas, denounced the censorship of Capriles Radonski and his campaign command of the journalists and press crews of the Bolivarian System of Communication and Information (SIBCI), who were impeded from covering the event.

It bears remembering that this was not only a veto, but an aggression as well. Last May, the VTV correspondent in the state of Guárico, Giovannina Guillén, was assaulted by Capriles’s bodyguards while covering his campaign in that state.

That same month, the VTV correspondent for Barinas, Janeth Suárez, and her camera crew were also assaulted by Capriles’s men on a campaign stop in that state.

In January of this year, journalist Pedro Carvajalino denounced an assault upon himself, again by Capriles’s bodyguards and by those of Metropolitan Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, before the Supreme Court (TSJ).

Translation mine.

Yes, that’s right, kiddies…they’re censoring the news now. Cero Chavismo en pantalla, as they used to say during the coup of ’02. No Chavismo on TV, or in the papers, or anywhere. Only in this case, the “Chavismo” is Majunchismo. And the censorship is the equivalent of an own goal in soccer.

Boy, at this rate, they’ll have that dead guy and his bus driver beat in no time!