Lopez’s preliminary hearing is well into its second day, with no sign of an official judgement on whether or not he will face trial. Given the statements given in court yesterday, it is certain that Lopez will remain in prison until a trial date is set.
Speaking on Lopez’s legal situation, Henrique Capriles had this to say today:
Today, our friend Leopoldo Lopez lives the same thing that we lived a few years ago [during his own time of legal troubles], unending audiences, absurd, a rotten justice!
(…)
We hope along with the community for justice and liberty [for our] friend Leopoldo Lopez.
We are seeing once again that justice in our country is administered by a political party, and that’s why it doesn’t work. I lived it myself. If there really was any justice in Venezuela, today our friend Leopoldo Lopez and the students who were arrested for demonstrating would be freed. That has to change. Let’s wait to see if with these cases Venezuelan justice shows the first signs of change. Injustice must give us more strength to drive for change.
Capriles also spoke on the scarcity situation in the country, particularly food scarcity:
Today, the reality is that food has to be brought over from another country, and the ones who benefit are the farmers and producers of other countries, while those of our own become poorer, because all prices have risen. Even in Mercal [a state-owned supermarket chain] products are more expensive. If before you could buy a carton of eggs with 100 bolivares, today you can’t.
In Other News
Seven people were arrested during a demonstration in Altamira, Caracas, including a twenty three year old student, according to the Foro Penal Venezolano.
The PSUV-controlled National Assembly voted today to throw their weight behind the investigation into the alleged plot to assassinate Maduro and overthrow the government. Blanca Eekhout (PSUV – Portuguesa), the second vice-president of the National Assembly, said:
They [the accused conspirators] are still free, they go unpunished before the massacre and deaths. Fascism is possible because there has not been justice.
In response to the allegations of conspiracy by the PSUV, Jose Manuel Gonzalez (Independent – Guarico) qualified the accusations as “grotesque”, and provided this colourful observation:
Ministro de alimentacion, aqui no hay magnicidio, aqui hay hambricidio.
The above statement translates into English as, “Minister of Nutrition, there’s no magnicide here, only hungercide“, playing on both the accusations by the PSUV and the crippling scarcity crisis the country if undergoing.
Finally, images from the Distribuidor Metropolitano in Caracas, where demonstrators and National Guard troops had a tense confrontation today:
The twitter caption with the images below claim that some kind of explosive went off while the National Guard officer was holding it, but I am unable to confirm that. Still, here are the pictures:
In Venezuela 