HT to Chuck Simmins on FBVenezuela held legislative elections last weekend and the results are heartening for anyone who believes in freedom.
Not since the late Hugo Chavez took power in 1999 had his United Socialist Party of Venezuela lost an election. This time, though, the opposition party won a two-thirds majority in the congress, and will have the ability to challenge the rule of Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's successor as president.
This was a result Maduro and his socialist government feared. In the run-up to the election, he jailed opposition leaders on flimsy pretexts, and banned others from running for office. His allies put a sham third party on the ballot with a similar name to that of the opposition in hope of confusing voters and winning by splitting the vote. Maduro rejected international monitoring of the election, raising fears that he would steal it. Even now, it's hard to say for sure he didn't try.
But despite all of this chicanery, and perhaps partly because of it, Maduro's United Socialist Party was buried in an electoral landslide. The reasons for the public's discontent with Chavism are plain enough, and rooted in the nature of socialism, a system that always and everywhere attempts to govern by thwarting human nature through state control of economic life