“It’s not enough that he oppresses us; he also has to mock us,” Rivas said. “Just as he can declare himself the winner of the election without evidence, he can decree that Jesus was born on October 1 and that’s when we should celebrate. He is desperate, or he is mocking us—or both.”
Maduro made the bizarre announcement during his weekly television appearance on Monday, calling the decision a “tribute” to the people of Venezuela.
“It’s September, and it already smells like Christmas,” Maduro said. “That’s why this year, as a way of paying tribute to you all and in gratitude to you all, I’m going to decree an early Christmas for October 1.”
Whatever joy Maduro hoped to bring with his tactic, he prompted the opposite reaction. One office worker from Caracas told The Associated Press, “Without money and with his political crisis, who can believe that there will be an early Christmas?”
Jorge Jraissati, a Venezuelan foreign policy expert and president of the Economic Inclusion Group, told Fox News Digital that he was “tempted to believe that Maduro’s irrational mind urged him to start Christmas in October,” but he could not “deny that stories like this portray Maduro as an idiotic character, refocusing people’s attention from the real problems of our country: the fact that our political institutions are hijacked, our economy is destroyed, and millions of people have left our country seeking a normal life.”
The announcement follows international condemnation of Maduro’s decision to pursue an arrest warrant for his opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, whom the international community continues to support as the true winner of the July 28 election despite Maduro and his party’s insistence to the contrary.
