I heard the radio interview of the rojo-rojito governor of Merida state. His speech, aimless was sustained with he usual banalities of chavismo: "apegado a la constitucion" "el 11 de abril" "la revolucion" "deestabilizador"and such platitudes that could not hide his disarray, his inability to understand what is really going. His long rambling is summarized quite shortly and completely by Globovision.
This is the sense we have from the regime: although they seemed to have looked forward a reaction (Globovison this morning was showing a full video of Lina Ron with a militarized brigade of her followers all with red shirts and flags, deliciously fascist in design) they never expected such a strong one and besides shooting they have no idea what to do.
To tell you how fast the international reaction was, Index on censorship, the English quarterly monitoring world censorship asked me for an article fast which is already up and front page. Please visit and try to leave a comment. Their editor is not only good but fast and in a hurry.The interest outside is quite simple to understand: in the civilized world NOBODY can understand why a government would go out of its way to design a new rules system uniquely to shut down a specific TV station on cable TV only (even if as an excuse a couple of other channels fall with the flack). However they all undertand one thing: it is purely a Chavez whim, but an unacceptable one. we are seeing only the early part of that: consequences will be worse than three years ago, bringing among other things a renewed interest from the rest of the world about the coming Venezuelan elections. Will the opposition play its cards right?