The Venezuelan government has announced that opposition parties will be banned from the 2018 election:
Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro, says the country’s main opposition parties are banned from taking part in next year’s presidential election.
He said only parties which took part in Sunday’s mayoral polls would be able to contest the presidency.
Leaders from the Justice First, Popular Will and Democratic Action parties boycotted the vote because they said the electoral system was biased.
President Maduro insists the Venezuelan system is entirely trustworthy.
In a speech on Sunday, he said the opposition parties had “disappeared from the political map”.
“A party that has not participated today and has called for the boycott of the elections can’t participate anymore,” he said.
By my calculations Venezuela is just a couple of steps away from creating a socialist utopia!
Eliminating opposition parties is nothing new for democratic nations. It’s especially common in socialist nations where democracy is promoted the most. While socialists tend to talk a big game when it comes to democracy, the devil is in the details and while socialist nations often let the proles vote they only let them vote for parties that push a socialist agenda. Oftentimes the number of approved parties is whittled down to one so, while the proles do get to vote, there is only one candidate for any position to vote for (which is where Venezuela is probably heading).