A major signature-gathering drive to officially activate the recall vote was scheduled for next week. It wasn’t quite democracy in the usual sense, clearly, but it also wasn’t a normal dictatorship. None of the labels seemed to stick; what did stick was the lasting impression of in-betweenness, of Venezuela as not-quite-a-dictatorship. For Venezuela’s pro-democracy activists, fighting a regime that has instituted dictatorship by tiny increments has been an exhausting ordeal. Venezuela is just a dictatorship.

Source: Washington Post October 21, 2016 21:08 UTC