Are Sanctions Beneficial?

At the end this April 2018, the presidential election in Venezuela is coming. On the other hand, unclear problem is the constitutions of Venezuela will begin dictating six-year presidential term at 2019. It is unclear who from the fragmented opposition will stand against Maduro. He also announced that the country's main opposition parties would be banned taking part in elections. That is why, "a lot of people very worried", including members of the opposition who have been calling for "fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections which they believe could not take place before the end of the year" How do you also think that is a political change will become in Venezuela from this April election?

It has occured to me, that in almost any political debate where a social democrat takes part (by today's standards, a "radical leftist", by 1980s standards a common liberal), Venezuela and its nominal "socialism" are brought up, so as to demonstrate, in a quite McCarthyite way, that socialism is an evil word. This has been the case with Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or Jean-Luc Mèlenchon in France. They are asked to defend a repressive, authoritarian regime as if it were the sole true propagator of socialism, or else they are seen as "out of touch with reality".

They have four key demands: Removal from office of the Supreme Court justices who issued the 29 March ruling General elections in 2017 Creation of a "humanitarian channel" to allow medication to be imported to counter the severe shortages in Venezuela Release of all the "political prisoners"