Thread by @ericfarns

Test your #Venezuela knowledge:

The person who "declared himself president" is:

(A) Juan Guaido
(B) Nicolas Maduro

The answer? B, of course. Maduro held a fraudulent election in 2018 and based on that declared himself president and re-inaugurated himself in early 2019.

Guaido asserted his prerogatives under the terms of the Chavez-established constitution, which says that the individual holding his congressional leadership position becomes interim president when the presidency is abandoned. Maduro's mandate ended when his term expired in 2019.

Since he was not freely and fairly re-elected, Maduro received no further mandate. The only way he could continue on was to declare himself the victor and re-inaugurate himself. When his mandate expired, there was no legal president in place. So, he declared himself president.

Nifty, huh? And yet, it's Guaido who is routinely (mis)labeled as the "self-declared president." So here's an idea: if people insist on calling Guaido a self-declared president, can we at least start calling Maduro what he is, a dictator?

5/6 It's amazing how often authoritarian regimes are able to shift the focus onto foibles of the opposition, who are under constant pressure by those same regimes, and even conscientious international observers buy into it and promote the dictatorship's narrative. Don't let them.

6/6 Message discipline is key: An illegitimate narco-regime staked by global authoritarians has wrecked #Venezuela; its leaders are credibly accused of crimes vs. humanity; free and fair presidential elections are the goal; they cannot occur with Maduro. Everything else is noise.