Moles in the MUD (I)

10/07/2011 in Uncategorized. 6 Comments

Guest Post

Today’s guest post follows on the heels of our earlier exposé of AD capo Henry Ramos Allup’s duplicitous dealings within the MUD (see http://vivavenezuelalibre.blogspot.com/2010/05/informe-guacharopigeondocxdurmiendo-con.html for source material).

It was Ramos Allup who chose Felix Arroyo, ex-CNE systems engineer and “persona de absoluta confianza del presidente del CNE, Francisco Carrasquero y de Jorge Rodríguez” (Sobella Mejías dixit), to be the party’s national under secretary for organization. The MUD has since appointed Arroyo as Jefe de la Mesa Electoral de la MUD.

In other words, AD and the rest of the MUD have chosen a known high-level chavista political and technical expert fixer with a history of corruption to be the liaison with the CNE and have the final word in choosing who’s going to be “miembros de mesa” and “testigos” at the voting centers in next year’s elections.

Anyone who has looked into the many documented allegations of widespread government vote-rigging will know that one of the main factors that determines whether the regime can get away with vote fraud or not is whether the opposition can field enough reliable “miembros de mesas” and “testigos” to cover the estimated 40,000 “mesas electorales” spread all over the country.

If you had any doubt that the MUD is sleeping with the enemy, doubt no more. When you look at what happens within the MUD with this new perspective, a lot of breaking political news takes on a new perspective.

For example, Manuel Rosales is returning from exile in Peru sometime in the very near future. What does that mean? Is Rosales courageously returning to fight his case in court? Or, perhaps, is the regime panicking at the prospect that President Hugo Chávez won’t be a candidate next year, so it’s necessary to bring back the opposition presidential candidate who took a fall in 2006 and who can be counted upon, if he is nominated next year as the opposition candidate, to take another fall in 2012?

The politics of electoral fraud in Bolivarian Venezuela are at least as convoluted as the methods used to execute the fraud itself. You can choose, like so many fraud-deniers, to take the blue pill and accept the official story. Or you can take the red pill, peek under the blanket, and start connecting the dots. Rod Serling might have been talking about Venezuelan politics when he famously said “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension – a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”

The author of our second guest post immediately below is a longtime acquaintance of Caracas Gringo who also authored our first guest post a little over one week ago. Recently the text below has been circulated to a very select group of people in Venezuela. We publish the paper here in the public interest. This blogger has read the paper but has not edited the text so that readers can read it as it was written originally and reach their own conclusions.

Caracas Gringo

Frente a Las Elecciones de 2012: El tema que nadie quiere discutir

Muchos amigos y colegas me han preguntado últimamente qué opino sobre lo que está pasando en nuestro mundo político, y qué veo de cara a las elecciones presidenciales. Como asesor y analista político he seguido de cerca a cada una de las elecciones presidenciales desde 1983, y he tenido el privilegio de poder examinar muy de cerca las dinámicas que rigen los procesos electorales. Evidentemente tengo mis opiniones al respecto.

Me preocupan enormemente aspectos claves de nuestro entorno político actual. Hace poco decidí plasmar mis inquietudes en un simple manifiesto, un llamado a la toma de consciencia, y a la acción. Ahora más que nunca los venezolanos necesitamos ver la cruda realidad de nuestro realpolitik y desenmascarar los mitos y las mentiras que lo encubren. Así que, como Diógenes con su linterna, busco a alguien que difunda la verdad que se esconde detrás de las apariencias, y que nos despierte mientras que todavía hay tiempo. Para comenzar, pensé en un aviso:

Se busca un hombre, o una mujer, una persona madura, sensata, valiente, que goza de un gran prestigio en la comunidad, con talla de estadista probado, capaz de articular con autoridad y de manera contundente una serie de planteamientos controversiales de la más absoluta trascendencia para las venideras elecciones. Puede ser, pero no es imprescindible que sea, un candidato a la presidencia, pero sí tiene que ser una persona de gran valor moral. Debe estar dispuesta a llevar a cabo un proceso y asumir con firmeza un papel protagónico frente al país, en los medios de comunicación, y decir, como osaba decir el niño en “El traje nuevo del Rey”, que el Rey está desnudo.

El fraude electoral – el último tabú

Venezuela es un país regido por tabúes. Aquí por ejemplo, desde hace varios años, pareciera que es tabú hablar de fraude electoral. Los pocos actores políticos que han osado afirmar, después de unas elecciones obviamente trampeadas, que se ha hecho fraude, se han convertido en parias políticos. Henry Ramos Allup, tan vilipendiado hoy en día, y con razón, tuvo sin embargo suficiente lucidez y coraje el 16 de agosto de 2004 para acusar el gobierno de fraude en el RR Como consecuencia medio país, desde el gobierno hasta líderes y voceros de la oposición, le cayó encima. Nunca más habló de fraude. (De hecho, hoy su complicidad con el gobierno es harto reconocido: ver http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/medicosdevenezuela/message/8434)

Voceros de Súmate en varias oportunidades tantearon el tema, y frente al oprobio, tanto de poderosos voceros del gobierno como de la oposición, terminaron callando; Oswaldo Álvarez Paz y Pablo Medina, entre otros, acusaron al gobierno de manipular los resultados electorales, pero no encontraron eco dentro de la oposición, y quedaron marginados.

En breve, si uno quiere hacer política desde la oposición y mantener cierta credibilidad, parece que uno no puede, ni debe, hablar de fraude.

Está más que comprobado, sin embargo, que desde el 2004 el oficialismo emplea sistemáticamente en cada elección una vasta y variada gama de artilugios para manipular los resultados electorales a su favor. Los datos y las pruebas contenidas en el Informe DDHH ONU 2011 elaborado por ESDATA (http://esdata.info/pdf/onu-epu.pdf ) son más que elocuentes, son contundentes, y las evidencias irrebatibles en este sentido. Pero para la opinión pública en general, y hasta para los pocos medios de comunicación supuestamente independientes que nos quedan, es como si nunca existieran.

La conspiración del silencio

Vivimos entonces una especie de conspiración de silencio, impuesta por la férula de un gobierno que se sabe, desde el 2004, ilegítimo (ver Summary del informe de la International Statistical Review, por M. M. Febres Cordero y G. Márquez , publicado en diciembre, 2006: http://bit.ly/gFZela ), y aupada desde los más altos niveles de un gran sector sedicente de la oposición, para callar cualquier acusación de fraude. Después de cada elección se habla de “anomalías”, de “irregularidades” y de “inconsistencias”. Pero nunca de fraude. Sin embargo, hoy día en el mundo entero, hasta en Irán, cuando gobiernos autoritarios roban elecciones, los ciudadanos indignados toman la calle y gritan ¡Fraude! Pero aquí no. A qué se debe esta extraña situación, y cuáles son las consecuencias para el país?

Por un lado, se puede sospechar que algunos prominentes dirigentes y voceros de la oposición están jugando el juego del gobierno. Existen indicios confiables de que por lo menos una campaña presidencial de oposición en los últimos años fue financiada en gran parte por el gobierno, con la condición de que el candidato y su equipo, después de sufrir la anticipada derrota, se abstuvieran de acusar el oficialismo de fraude. Es un hecho notorio que prominentes voceros opositores dieron declaraciones a la prensa nacional y extranjera, y emprendieron un ciclo de charlas a nivel internacional para convencer a diversos públicos que las elecciones habían sido absolutamente transparentes.

El argumento fraudulento que sostiene la conspiración

Pero estas especulaciones son, al final, simples especulaciones. El hecho es que el pretexto que se usa, el argumento que se esgrime en círculos entendidos de la oposición donde se considera que el fraude es un hecho, es que no se puede hablar abiertamente de fraude porque si se supiera que los resultados electorales están manipuladas, los votantes dejarían de votar.

Este pretexto enmascara o una complicidad tácita con el gobierno, la de mantener el tema fraude fuera del léxico del venezolano, o refleja un frío cinismo que supone que un pequeño grupo de privilegiados puede saber la verdad, pero no pueden decírselo al gran público, ya que el juego consiste en llevarlos, cuan ganado, al matadero de las urnas año tras año.

Sin embargo, nuestra élite política, atrapada como está en un laberinto de mentiras, se ha olvidado de una verdad fundamental: el pueblo no es bruto, y no se le puede engañar en perpetuidad. La mayoría de los venezolanos intuyen ya desde hace tiempo que el sistema electoral es fraudulento. Ya en 2005, según un estudio de Datos, casi el 40% de los votantes creía que el uso de las capta huellas era para determinar cómo había votado cada elector. Haz tu propia encuesta, en la calle, y te sorprenderá el grado de cinismo que existe alrededor del tema. La mayoría de la gente sospecha que las elecciones son amañadas. ¿Y por qué no? Si el gobierno tiene todas las facilidades para hacerlo, sin impedimento ninguno, porqué no lo haría? He preguntado a varios encuestadores si han indagado sobre la percepción del público en relación con el tema del fraude, y pareciera que los mismos encuestadores forman parte de esta conspiración de silencio, ya que simplemente no existen estudios serios sobre el tema.

Las consecuencias de este fraude moral perpetrado contra el votante ha contribuido en gran parte, en mi opinión, a la creación de un votante nunca conocido en Venezuela antes del 2004, el llamado Ni-Ni. Se supone que estos votantes no comulgan con el chavismo pero tampoco con la oposición. ¿Por qué será? Hay muchas teorías, y cada cuanto en la prensa se derrama mucha tinta en análisis y especulaciones. Se dice que sufren de anomia, desconfían de ambas bandas, no encuentran propuestas válidas o candidatos atractivos en la llamada oposición, o sencillamente no votan porque no les interesa la política.

La disonancia cognitiva, arma de destrucción masiva

Pero la teoría que más tiene sentido para algunos es que estos votantes sufren de disonancia cognitiva. El psicólogo Leo Festinger, autor de la teoría de la disonancia cognitiva, describe esta condición así: “El estado de tensión que se produce cuando una persona tiene dos pensamientos, creencias o sentimientos que considera importantes, y que están contrapuestos”. En nuestro caso, los votantes intuyen, sienten y por ende “saben” que el gobierno roba elecciones. El gobierno lo niega, por supuesto, lo que es de esperar. Para eso está.

Qué pasa sin embargo en la mente de este votante opositor cuando los voceros de ONGs y organizaciones políticas que a todas luces se oponen férreamente al gobierno (por ejemplo voceros del Grupo la Colina, de la MUD, asesores, técnicos, encuestadores, y hasta algunos pre-candidatos) también se suman al coro oficialista, y nos aseguran que, aunque tenga fallas, el CNE está cada día más transparente, que hay muy pocas posibilidades de fraude, que nuestro verdadero único enemigo es la abstención, y que si se defiende el voto en las mesas podremos triunfar en 2012.

Hablemos entonces de la abstención, nuestro sempiterno enemigo, según los analistas y voceros de la oposición. Uno podría preguntarse que si hay tantos votantes desilusionados – y los hay — con el sistema, ¿por qué entonces tenemos una muy saludable tasa de participación en la votación, que hasta supera el 60% en las contiendas más reñidas?

La respuesta evidentemente está en la composición fraudulenta del REP, el cual contiene, según estimaciones bien fundadas (ver apéndice http://esdata.info/pdf/LOPE.pdf ) un altísimo porcentaje, un mínimo de 20% y hasta un 30%, de votantes virtuales o fantasmas. Es cierto, entonces, que la verdadera abstención está muy por encima de lo que indican las cifras del CNE, pero la abstención oficial es baja porque millones de votantes “virtuales”, personas que no existen, pero que sí están inscritas, sí votan. La verdadera abstención podría bien superar el 50%, pero los votos virtuales hacen parecer que los venezolanos acuden a las urnas con entusiasmo y un gran sentido de responsabilidad cívica.

Es decir, la verdadera abstención opositora es altísima, mucho más de lo que reflejan las cifras oficiales. Pero dado el hecho que ningún vocero creíble de la oposición está dispuesto asignar la culpabilidad al CNE y la composición fraudulenta del REP como la fuente de votos virtuales, nos hacen creer que el oficialismo es mucho más fuerte de lo que es en realidad. Al no divulgar la verdad sobre el fraude sistémico (los multi-cedulados, el fraude electrónico, los votantes fantasmas) la oposición le hace el juego al gobierno y confunde el público, ya que con su doble discurso los mismos que claman contra la abstención son los responsables por ella. Es un círculo vicioso: cuando los discursos no cuadran, surge inevitablemente la disonancia cognitiva.

¿Qué podemos suponer cuando nos damos cuenta que las más prominentes figuras de la oposición repiten día tras día el mismo mensaje del gobierno? Supongo que muchos intuyen que gran parte de sus líderes les están mintiendo, y por ende no son confiables. Recuerdan que quienes prometieron en 2006 “cobrar el voto” nunca lo cobraron. ¿Porqué será distinta la situación la próxima vez? se preguntan. Quizás en ese momento simplemente dejarán de pensar, ya que la carga de disonancia cognitiva será demasiada pesada. Quizás en ese momento experimentarán un corto circuito mental y dejarán de creer en todos los políticos. Y prefieren no votar. Será que así nace el Ni-Ni.

Lo que nos depara el 2012

Corremos no el riesgo, sino la certeza, de repetir en el 2012 el mismo escenario de las elecciones presidenciales de 2006, donde encuestas altamente confiables (Penn Schoen & Berland) proyectaban a cinco semanas del 3 de diciembre un empate técnico entre Hugo Chávez y Manuel Rosales, pero los resultados oficiales dieron al primero un margen de victoria inédito de 27 puntos, si no tratamos con transparencia y seriedad el tema del fraude electoral, y si no hacemos nada para contrarrestarlo.

Afirmar que no se debe hablar del fraude para no espantar a las ovejas es, en sí, un fraude cometido por nuestra élite política contra el pueblo venezolano. Equivale a decir que uno no debe hablar de los tiburones que nadan a la orilla de la playa porque no debemos espantar a los bañistas.

La conspiración del silencio está promovida conscientemente, con gran cinismo, por un pugno de cínicos y de oportunistas.

Los cínicos porque aparentan oponerse a Chávez, pero para muchos los odios son más fuertes que los deseos de cambio. Impedir a como dé lugar “que vuelvan los adecos”, por ejemplo, significa que es mejor aguantar unos años más de Chávez que correr el riesgo de que vuelva lo que para ellos era la pesadilla de la mal llamada IV República. Los oportunistas, porque donde hay dinero, y quien lo distribuye, habrá oportunidades. Estos dirán que el primer deber de un político o empresario es simplemente sobrevivir. O hasta prosperar, si posible. Si esto significa decir mentiras y recibir dinero del gobierno en cambio, el fin justifica los medios. El chantaje económico, en un país donde el gobierno controla la mayoría de la actividad económica, es un arma muy eficaz. Cuántos políticos, cuántos partidos, cuántos periódicos dependen de la partida secreta del gobierno para sobrevivir? La realidad es brutal. Nada nuevo bajo el sol.

La conspiración del silencio está promovida también, inconscientemente, por seres de buena voluntad actuando de buena fe, que confían en sus mentores políticos y no se dan cuenta del fraude moral cometido por ellos. Estos inocentes prefieren no investigar, indagar, ver la realidad en frente. Prefieren vivir en la negación, y hasta negar con vehemencia que lo están haciendo. La mentira, aunada a la disonancia cognitiva, son las armas más potentes de esta dictadura. Cuando no puede convencer con mentiras, compra consciencias y fabulistas de toda índole para confundirnos, neutralizarnos, volvernos miedosos y pasivos, y así aniquilarnos.

Un llamado a la acción

¿Quién tendrá el coraje político para denunciar este crimen contra los electores de este país? ¿Quién tendrá la valentía de decir en voz alta que el Rey está desnudo, que lo que reina en la Venezuela de hoy es el imperio de la mentira, en todos los sentidos; que vivimos en una dictadura singularmente única, una dictadura del siglo XXI, donde muchos de nuestros líderes políticos son nuestros propios verdugos políticos, envueltos en un siniestro juego donde sus oscuros intereses personales anulan el interés público.

Hay que comenzar con algo. Hay que hablar del tema. Hay que preguntar, investigar, exigir, y coordinar una campaña, una lucha por la verdad. Hay que reconocer el peligro que nos acecha, y sacar por fin el tema fraude electoral del armario. Y que caiga quien caiga en el proceso.

Debemos entender que sí podemos derrotar al dictador en las urnas en 2012, pero sólo si tomamos las precauciones necesarias, exigiendo transparencia en todos los pasos requeridos para llegar a las elecciones. Quienes se oponen a Chávez ya son mayoría, desde hace años! Las encuestas, casi todas, dejaron de reflejar la realidad del país hace muchos años. Acudiendo con confianza masivamente a las urnas y votando por el candidato opositor, sí podemos derrotarlo. Pero primero, para superar la anomia, la desconfianza y el derrotismo frutos de la disonancia cognitiva, tenemos todos el derecho y la responsabilidad de actuar y denunciar con firmeza el fraude.

Es un hecho indiscutible que el oficialismo tiene la capacidad de inventar de la nada una cantidad de votos virtuales que suman hasta un 30% de los votantes inscritos en el REP. Esto significa que la oposición, para superar el fraude, debe conseguir un mínimo de 65% de los votos. Una tarea hercúlea. Pero no imposible.

El proceso de cambio que debemos emprender comienza con una profunda toma de consciencia. Debemos entender que las apariencias engañan. Que gran parte de los líderes y voceros más prominentes de la oposición nos están mintiendo, consciente o inconscientemente. Que existe, dentro de nuestra siempre muy viva sociedad de cómplices, una conspiración de silencio cuyo propósito es mantener a como dé lugar el estatus quo que beneficia tanto al gobierno como a grandes sectores de quienes dicen oponerse al gobierno. Y recordemos que no sólo la oposición sufre las consecuencias del fraude electoral y la conspiración de silencio. Importantes corrientes políticas dentro del mismo chavismo son marginadas electoralmente por las manipulaciones electorales de su líder.

En muchos países que han sufrido la violencia política bajo regímenes autoritarios, en África y los países de Europa oriental, la antigua Yugoslavia, los nuevos gobiernos emergentes han creado comisiones de la verdad para que se descubran y se asignen responsabilidades por delitos cometidos durante estas dictaduras, y para ayudar a conciliar el pasado con el presente. Reconocen que no se puede crear bases sólidas para un nuevo país sobre cimientos fracturados por mentiras, rencores, recelos, y desconfianza mutua.

En estos tiempos, cuando existe desconfianza sobre quién es quién, Venezuela necesita una Comisión de la Verdad y de la Reconciliación, en materia electoral, pero antes de las elecciones. De no hacerlo, repetiremos sin ninguna duda las tristes experiencias del pasado.

De no hacerlo, enfrentaremos la venidera contienda electoral con los ojos otra vez vendados, convencidos otra vez por nuestra clase política que la victoria está a la vuelta de la esquina, y perderemos de nuevo. Y de ahí en adelante dejarán de existir las condiciones para un cambio de gobierno pacífico e institucional.

Quién tendrá el valor de enfrentar la conspiración de silencio, abrir la caja de Pandora de la mentira, y hablar en voz alta sobre un tema que está en la mente de todos, pero que muy pocos se atreven a abordar? Quién tendrá la visión y la lucidez para entender que nunca podremos reconstruir este país sobre una base de mentiras? Quién nos recordará que el fin no justifica los medios?

Que llegue rápido. No nos queda mucho tiempo más.

Bad break for democracy

01/07/2011 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

President Hugo Chavez finally confirmed what everyone already knew since several weeks ago. Chavez has cancer. What a rotten break for Venezuelan democracy.

Mary O’Grady’s 27 June “Americas” column in the Wall Street Journal explains why a Chavez felled by cancer would be a very bad outcome for Venezuela:

“While conventional wisdom holds that the demise of Mr. Chávez would set Venezuela free, it may instead make the country more repressive. If there is any justice in the world, he will return to Venezuela to marinate in his own stew—the economic disaster he has created over the past 12 years. A serious illness that takes him out of play would leave Venezuela haunted by the ghost of chavismo much as Peronism has haunted Argentina for the past half-century.”

There’s another reason why an ailing Chavez is a very bad outcome for Venezuela.

Chavez until now has been the “glue” that bonds together the many political parties and groups that make up the opposition Democratic Unity Table (MUD).

MUD exists mainly because Chavez is a devastating candidate in any election.

Until now there hasn’t been anyone in the political opposition with the popular appeal, charisma and rhetorical skills needed to best Chavez in an election campaign, even with Venezuela’s economy in ruins.

There are some very promising young opposition leaders like Maria Corina Machado and Henrique Capriles Radonski, and more not mentioned here.

But now that Chavez is revealed as a sorely weakened president, the MUD’s always tenuous unity is already fraying.

The MUD’s dominant political organizations include Accion Democratica, Un Nuevo Tiempo, Copei and Primero Justicia.

The leaders of these dominant parties in the MUD until now have been among the loudest proponents of a unified candidate to be chosen in open primaries that currently are scheduled for February 2012.

The sight of a physically ailing president in coming weeks and months could encourage perceptions among many MUD leaders that Chavez is toast at the polls, no matter who runs against him.

And worse, many MUD leaders may think that if Chavez is too ill to seek re-election, whoever the PSUV fields will be defeated easily.

If the MUD’s “unity” fractures, the revolution will continue in the presidency even if the PSUV’s candidate is Elias Jaua.

Another factor in play is the moles in the MUD – the “leaders” who are in cahoots with the regime despite their public criticisms of the regime.

[AD’s Secretary General Henry Ramos Allup heads our list of moles in the MUD; he is an “opposition leader” who secretly also carries water for the regime. But there are other moles in the MUD including senior officials in AD (Felix Arroyo, for example), and also in UNT, Primero Justicia and, possibly, even Copei.]

Defense Minister General-in-Chief Carlos Mata Figueroa and General Henry Rangel Gomez, commander of the armed forces joint strategic command, have announced in the past 24 hours that the armed forces stand united in support of the president. Both know this isn’t true.

The armed forces are always a wild card in situations like this one. When Caesar weakens physically, his Praetorian commanders always entertain greater ambitions.

Several of my active and retired Venezuelan army friends reported today that many “elements” in the armed forces are evaluating the president’s speech last night.

“It’s too soon after the president’s speech to determine with any accuracy what the implications could be for the economy and for society in general,” one officer, a Colonel with an intelligence background, said.

Chavez’s speech failed if its purpose was to reassure the general public. Important questions were not answered and new questions were raised.

Does Chavez have cancer of the prostate or is it somewhere in his digestive tract? What is the prognosis? Prostate cancer usually is more treatable than digestive tract cancer, so the location of the president’s cancer matters.

When does Chavez expect to return to Venezuela? Chavez currently is absent from Venezuela illegally under the existing Constitution. Presidential power has not been transferred to Vice President Jaua in the president’s absence. And Jaua has declared that he does not want to exercise the presidency during Chavez’s absence.

Chavez speaks by telephone every day with his ministers and senior PSUV officials, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said this week.

But under Venezuela’s constitution, none of the president’s actions or orders made during his continued absence from the country is legal or constitutional, according to some constitutional experts.

The potential implications, if these experts are correct, must be of great concern to the managers of foreign entities that are negotiating billions of dollars in loans that the Chavez regime would repay in the future through Pdvsa with crude oil and refined products.

What if President Chavez is too ill to continue exercising the presidency until his term ends after the December 2012 elections? Who would replace him in the interim.

The Constitution says that the vice president succeeds the president if the latter becomes incapacitated. But Chavez also has the authority to appoint the vice president at whim.

Chavez could fire Jaua and replace him with…who, if not Jaua? Perhaps Diosdado Cabello? Or Ali Rodrguez Araque? Or Rafael Ramirez? Or Jorge Giordani?

Chavez has never nurtured any potential successors. He’s a one-man show, “El Comandante Presidente” for life.

In power now for almost 13 years, Chavez already was campaigning for re-election in December 2012 so that he can continue as president until end-2018, at which time he probably would seek re-election again.

Chavez has been the center of everything for 13 year. Chavez has no second-in-command figures he can delegate power to successfully, even on a temporary basis. Chavez has no recognizable successors or heirs.

There now is a power vacuum in Venezuela that will escalate or shrink in tandem with the president’s health. If Chavez bounces back quickly the power vacuum will narrow, but if the president’s malady becomes visibly more acute the power vacuum will grow larger very quickly.

The regime’s top priority now, with strong Cuban backing/encouragement, of course, is to maintain the public illusion that Chavez is recovering his health quickly and remains firmly in charge of the country.

But this fiction will become more difficult to maintain the longer that Chavez remains in Havana.

The Forbidden F Word

30/06/2011 in Uncategorized. 6 Comments

Guest Post

Some opposition leaders are knowingly in cahoots with the government, and are consciously playing down the reality — not the threat, or the possibility, but the reality — of the massive systemic fraud that will be used next year (as it has been used in every election since 2004) to steal the presidential elections.

Some opposition leaders also are completely lacking in curiosity and/or moral conviction, are just playing don’t-rock-the-boat, don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and buy the line parroted by the fraud-deniers that says that if you talk about fraud then the voters will be discouraged and won’t go to the polls.

Fact: The YES beat the NO votes by an estimated 56% to 44% in the 2004 Recall Referendum. This affirmation is substantiated in the Febres Cordero-Marquez study published in the peer-review journal, the International Statistical Review of December 2006 (see http://bit.ly/gFZela).

Hugo Chávez has been exercising the presidency of Venezuela illegitimately since 2004, and he knows this. And this, more than his ties to the FARC, ETA, and associated middle eastern terror groups, violation of UN prohibitions on doing business with Iran, laundering billions of dollars, running a criminal state-sponsored narcotics enterprise, and systematically violating human rights….this is Chavez’s fundamental Achilles heel, and it is what he is most zealous about covering up. Chavez has bought very large swathes of the political opposition in order to keep this truth under wraps.

Fact: Chavez either beat Manuel Rosales by a few points, or Rosales beat Chavez by a few points — we will never know who really won — in the 2006 presidential elections.

We know this because the Rosales campaign used an extremely sophisticated polling methodology to shed light on authentic as opposed to expressed voter perceptions and preferences. Douglas Schoen, of the well-known US survey research firm Penn Schoen & Berland, understood when he arrived in Venezuela in August 2006 that it would be impossible to get poll respondents to speak freely to an interviewer, because of the paranoia and distrust that characterize citizen behavior in authoritarian states.

He therefore devised a simultaneous dual-poll strategy: one poll was a traditional 1,200 sample house-to-house survey – the standard still in use by all pollsters here – and the other was a 2,000 sample self-administered survey conducted in 200 public places throughout the country, which went to great pains to assure respondent anonymity; both surveys were conducted on the same day using the same questionnaire.

When the results were tallied and compared the anonymous poll consistently showed a 14-pt difference for responses that attempted to measure respondents’ voting intentions and appreciations of Chavez’s government. Whereas the house-to-house survey showed, for example, that Chavez enjoyed a 27-pt lead over Rosales in late August, the on-the-street intercept survey showed Chávez with a 13-pt lead. Schoen called this 14-pt spread the Fear Factor.

(The implications of this finding for Venezuelan pollsters is astounding. Are any of them using this methodology? Not that I know of. Why not? What do you say, Luis Vicente León, Oscar Schemel, Alfredo Keller? Why won’t you take the big jump, innovate, and try to get authentic data instead of the same crap that Chacón and Seijas churn out month after month?)

In late August, 14 weeks before the December 3 election, Chavez was leading Rosales by 27% in Penn Schoen Berland’s house-to-house survey. This finding is consistent with other pollsters’ findings at the time. But his lead was only 13 points in the anonymous survey.

Two months later, in late October, six weeks before the elections, Chavez’s lead in the house-to-house survey was down to 20 points – and 6 points in the anonymous survey.

Schoen presented these findings in early November to Rosales’ senior command, which included Teodoro Petkoff (who was head of the campaign strategy committee), Diego Arria, Omar Barboza, and the top Zulia people in the campaign.

Schoen forecast that Chavez’s lead could easily be whittled down by at least one point per week if Rosales ran a fabulous last-month campaign, in which case Rosales theoretically could win by a few points; on the other hand, if Chavez were able to reverse his downward trend and build momentum in the last month, then he could beat Rosales by a few points.

In Schoen’s words, the race was a dead heat, and too close to call.

We all remember the official results; Chávez beat Rosales by 27 points.

But that was then, and this is now.

What would be the Fear Factor five years later? I’d venture to guess 20 points.

So when I read (http://politica.eluniversal.com/2011/06/22/5-de-cada-10-ciudadanos-avala-cambio-de-gobierno.shtml) that Chavez’s support is down to 50% I subtract 20 points and interpret this to mean that 6 out of 10 people want him out.

Fact: The reason that Chavez’s Constitutional amendment vote failed in 2007 was that the CNE, under pressure from the military, refused to count as valid some 1,800,000 votes – 12% of the actas were never published — which came in after the polls had closed and which, according to knowledgeable observers, would have been revealed to be 99% in Chavez’s favor.

The official difference between the SI and the No votes was approximately 1 percentage point, and yet the CNE president stated at 2am, barely 5-6 hours after the polls closed, that the margin by which the measure was defeated was “not reversible.”

To this day (http://esdata.info/hemeroteca/20080127-El-Universal.jpg) 12% of the votes cast on 2 December, 2007 have never been tabulated, and the CNE website does not reflect their existence.

A Hinterlaces poll run a week before the election showed the measure being defeated by a margin of 15-20 points.

This drives a stake squarely through the heart of the tired old fraud deniers’ argument that you can’t rig elections here because all the actas are signed off on and tabulated, doesn’t it?

Imagine what the chavista thug machine can do at 8pm after polls have been kept open for an additional four hours and loyal oppo witnesses and miembros de mesas have been intimidated into leaving before the actas are signed off on. Imagine what signatures they can forge on the actas when they routinely can get away with using “indelible” ink that easily washes off with bleach!
FACT: At the very least 20%, and as many as 30%, of the voters registered in the REP do not in fact exist. Here’s a revealing paragraph from a study by the ex-chair of the faculty of statistics at UCV:

“Un dato importante para las elecciones del 26 de septiembre del 2010 es que al hacer este análisis por municipios, estados y a escala nacional, encontramos que en el 46% de los Municipios se inscribió el 100% de sus habitantes, el 31% de los municipios estuvieron inscritos el 90% de la población. Al examinara estas variables encontramos que el 93% de la población mayor o igual a 18 años está inscrita en el registro electoral, y a nivel de Estados encontramos que en todos los estados están inscritos más del 80% de la población votante, algo fuera de los parámetros estadísticos de conocidos países democráticos donde se realizan elecciones.”

Why does the opposition nonetheless manage to win some races against this massive machine? Because the opposition has managed in some races to genuinely outpoll chavismo by 25 to 30 points. In a situation like this not even someone as powerful as Diosdado Cabello (witness the Capriles Radonski vs Cabello race in 2008, where Capriles had an official win of 6 points over Cabello, but where esdata.info forensics showed that his real margin of victory was closer to 25-30 points) can muster enough phantom votes to beat him.

The point is that the opposition is NOT running neck-and-neck race against Chávez.

The anti-chavistas are WAY more than 50% of the population.

Chavez can barely count on 40%, perhaps as little as 30%, for firm support, and even that is eroding. Look at the answers to questions that ask whether private property should be abolished, or whether the state does a better job of providing jobs than the private sector, or any really hard, divisive issue that brings out the radicals. The radicals run between 25% and 30%.

In my experience, those who are the most skeptical about vote fraud are those who consider themselves part of the intelligentsia – the very ones who should best understand it. If you ask the man in the street, domestic employee, a cab driver, the guy at the abasto on the corner, you-name-it, every single one of them will tell you that, sure the government commits vote fraud.

The conspiracy of silence that keeps the status quo going can only continue with the complicity of senior opposition figures, pollsters, journalists and other witting or unwitting collaborators who depend one way or the other for their very existence on the government itself.

Until a significant segment of anti-Chavez Venezuelans understand that they’ve been, and they’re being, sold down the river by the very people in the MUD who are supposedly representing their interests, they’ll continue abstaining from voting, as they are doing now — those are the Ni-Ni. (If you want proof of some in MUD playing hand in glove with the regime, read http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/medicosdevenezuela/ message/8434 , where the ex-secretary general of AD in Monagas state, an honorable man who resigned his position in protest against the collaborationist line being taken at the top of the party, reveals that Felix Arroyo, AD’s electoral strategist and chief MUD liaison with the CNE was the a senior CNE official who in 2004 recommended the purchase of the Smartmatic machines and oversaw the voter registration drive that culminated in a increase of 3.8 million “new voters” on the rolls.)

Do the math: of the 18 million registered voters out of a population of under 30 million (over 80% of the total eligible voting population is registered to vote; approximately 60% of the entire population is registered to vote!), some 25%, or approximately 4.5 million, are phantom voters. But this 25% can theoretically be called upon to “vote” all the time.

They are not evenly distributed around the country — if they were, Diosdado could have beaten Capriles in Miranda. No, they are concentrated in the countryside (where they’re inaccessible to scrutiny).

Now, if we look at the abstention figures, we see that in 2006 an amazing 75% of the registered voters cast votes. Subtract the 25% of phantom voters and you get the real voter turnout: maybe 50% of registered voters. In 2007, for the constitutional referendum, only 55% of voters turned out to vote, according to the official figures. This means that maybe as little as 30% of real voters turned out to vote. Since Chavez was pushing a constitutional amendment which would have benefitted him, but not party bosses, he was really the only person within the PSUV who was working day and night for the referendum to pass, he was actively sandbagged by many of his own people, which is why he wasn’t able to muster all the 4 million-odd phantom votes around the country, and why he lost.

This system is aided and abetted by the top people in the MUD, some of whom do so cynically, for personal political and financial gain, and others naively, because they’re of the don’t-rock-the-boat, easy-does-it, go-along-and-get-along traditional Venezuelan school of politics. After all, what’s the alternative for these professional politicos? Be crushed by the chavista machine and be out of a job.

My central point is that most people know that the government commits fraud and steals election after election. Eight years ago, when you could get a million people into the streets to march against the government, there WERE no Ni-Ni’s in the country, because the battle lines were firmly drawn, and although the opposition leadership was naive and incompetent, at least it wasn’t playing with marked cards.

The Ni-Ni exist today not because they’re somehow equidistant between Chavez and the opposition. They exist because they will never vote for Chavez, but they don’t trust the opposition leadership. Why don’t they trust the opposition leadership? Because they smell a rat.

They’ve been told all too often, as Rosales told them in 2006 “Vamos a cobrar” (roughly “we’re going to make sure we make our votes count”), and then they’ve been sold down the river. It’s a fact that there were no Ni-Ni’s before 2004. And 2004 was the Rubicon for vote fraud. There was an overwhelming sense that the SI had won. Even chavismo was depressed on Aug 16, despite their “victory”. The forensics proved that the SI won. And the people knew in their gut that Chavez’s mandate had effectively been revoked.

But they watched the grotesque spectacle of opposition leaders like Petkoff badger and harass people like Pablo Medina and Henry Ramos Allup into backing off the fraud charges, accusing them of being irresponsible, and generally acting like political kommissars for the regime instead of bona fide opositores. And right there a substantial percentage, as much as half, of the heretofore opposition stopped trusting “their” leaders, and many of them even decided to abandon electoral politics after watching Rosales walk the plank in 2006.

How do you get what amounts to 50% of the people, the Ni-Ni’s, to go back and vote again, after they’ve decided they “won’t be fooled again”? How do you resolve the acute cognitive dissonance of these voters and re-empower them into voting?

You start by telling the truth.

And you get people to understand why and how they’ve been fucked.

And you show up the fraudsters for who they really are.

And you challenge the politicians who remain standing to either continue playing the game, or get with the program and denounce the “sociedad de cómplices”… and thereby level the playing field and give an authentically anti-Chavez candidate who has the ideas and the vision to lead, and the stomach and balls to try to change things here, an even chance of winning in 2012.

Otherwise, it’s just a replay of 2006. And since it’s a titanic battle, an all-or-nothing contest where every chavista/kommissar-cum-bureaucrat is fighting for his/her very existence, you can be sure that they’ll manage to make ALL of those 4.5 million phantom voters vote next year. If there are 14 million “real” voters left, we need at least 9 million votes to make it over the top.

It’s tough, but doable. But it’ll never be doable unless we recover and re-empower the 6 or 7 million Ni-Ni’s who are drowning in cognitive dissonance and have tuned out of politics..

All about Felix

29/06/2011 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Felix Arroyo, deputy secretary of national organization in Accion Democratica and close associate of its Secretary General Henry Ramos Allup, has an unusual career resume even by Venezuelan standards of questionable “negocios” and switching sides (“saltando la talanquera”).

Arroyo has been charged but never convicted of corruption involving the sale of visas to Chinese nationals, served as electoral registry Director at the CNE when the SmartMatic electronic voting machines were purchased, and now is a top AD official and close associate of Ramos Allup, whose regular public criticisms of President Hugo Chavez never amount to more than the barking of a toothless old hound.

As head of the Diex (now Onidex) passport and immigration authority in 1990 during the second Carlos Andres Perez administration, Arroyo was directly implicated in the massive sale of Venezuelan visas to Chinese nationals by officials at Venezuela’s Consulate in Hong Kong.

The going price for a Venezuelan visa at the Hong Kong consulate in 1990 was $2,500 to $3,000 per visa payable up-front in hard American cash. The Foreign Ministry initially said that over 10,000 visas had been sold to Chinese nationals who paid cash or almost $30 million in total. That estimate was later reduced to 1,000 visas – still a hefty $3 million of pure profit to the Venezuelans who participated in the scam.

Public Patrimony Safeguard Judge Mildred Camero determined that at least 93 people were involved in Caracas and Hong Kong. In November 1992 the judge issued arrest warrants against Arroyo and the Hong Kong Consul, Jose Gonzalo Ramirez Calles (both had been sacked by then), for “undue expedition of documents,” an offense punishable with five years in prison.

Camero’s investigation also determined that in addition to peddling visas for greenbacks, the Venezuelan officials also were selling tourism packages for which Chinese tourists traveling to Venezuela were charged up to $17,000 each.

But Arroyo and Ramirez Calles apparently were never detained by the PTJ (now CICPC). The case remains open at the Supreme Court, but has never been actively pursued since even before Hugo Chavez was first elected president in December 1998.

Arroyo’s next job in “government” was as Electoral Registry Director at the CNE national electoral council in 2004, where he was a member of a “technical commission” that recommended that the CNE award SmartMatic a contract without bidding to supply the electronic voting machines that were used in the August 2004 presidential recall referendum. (The world’s foremost expert on SmartMatic is Alek Boyd.) That same year, the electoral registry (REP) increased by over 3 million voters.

Arroyo’s activities at the CNE compelled CNE rector Sobella Mejias to publicly call for his firing in 2004. She charged at the time that Arroyo “is a person absolutely trusted by CNE President Francisco Carrasquero and also by Jorge Rodriguez.”

Arroyo was still Electoral Registry Director at the CNE when the infamous “Tascon List” was compiled of voters who signed a petition for Chavez’s recall, using voter registry date provided by CNE officials. The Tascon List was used to fire tens of thousands of public sector employees who signed petitions to recall Chavez.

However, Arroyo by 2008 had switched sides, joining Accion Democratica (AD) where he was given the title of National Organization Sub-Secretary by Ramos Allup, who runs AD with an iron-fisted grip. Arroyo in 2008 also was AD’s representative in opposition meetings with the CNE to verify that the infamous SmartMatic voting machines were in good condition.

And of course Arroyo declared on behalf of AD and the opposition that he was “satisfied” all was in good order for the 23 November 2008 regional elections. Others who said they were “satisfied” at the time included Un Nuevo Tiempo’s representative to the CNE.

In 2009 Arroyo certified that AD was satisfied with the latest audit of the electoral registry (REP). Vicente Bello signed on behalf of UNT, and Paul Morris for the PSUV.

Arroyo is AD’s national organization sub-secretary, but he also is involved in the opposition democratic Unity Table’s (MUD) process of preparing for the presidential primaries in February 2012, which reportedly includes liaising with the CNE because of his past experience.

Arroyo reportedly is a good friend of Libertador District Mayor and former CNE President Jorge Rodriguez. Arroyo also is close to Ramos Allup, and AD is one of the MUD’s big four players (the other three are UNT, Copei and Primero Justicia).

Because of AD’s status in MUD and his closeness to Ramos Allup, Arroyo reportedly has some influence in the MUD’s political and strategic deliberations on all manner of electoral matters including MUD’s internal primaries, the presidential elections, regional elections, legislative elections, etc.

Arroyo’s odd resume motivated some elements of AD to urge his expulsion from the party in 2009. A report on Arroyo detailing his checkered career in public administration and his ties to regime officials like Libertador Mayor Rodriguez was presented to Ramos Allup in 2009. AD’s secretary general dismissed Arroyo’s critics.

There are never any coincidences in Venezuelan politics. Arroyo’s career path from CNE electoral registry director to top AD official who participates in the MUD’s electoral strategy discussions is something that voters rightly should be concerned about.

Venezuela in Greek: Eímaste patí̱same

05/01/2011 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

President Chavez was all over the map today, declaring that the PSUV will “crush” the opposition with the truth, speaking ill of the late President Carlos Andres Perez, brandishing Simon Bolivar’s sword at a rally in Plaza O’Leary, and announcing that he will seek re-election in 2012.

The MUD’s 65 opposition deputies joined the new National Assembly, holding up placards that said “52%” to remind everyone that the opposition won the popular vote in the 26 September 2010 elections, but the regime has more seats in the assembly (98) because it rigged/gerrymandered the system.

It’s unclear what, if anything, the new National Assembly will do besides argue and gridlock.

Chavez doesn’t have sufficient votes to impose his will via the legislature, and MUD’s 65 + PPT’s 2 seats aren’t enough votes to reverse anything the previous all-Chavez assembly approved during December 2010.

But Chavez does have his special powers to rule by decree for 18 months and ignore the assembly. Chavez also has the new Supreme Court in his pocket.

Chavez appears to be in control, but appearances frequently deceive.

It is still Christmas this week in Venezuela. The New Year starts next week when everyone returns to the reality of their respective daily lives, millions of Venezuelans who will encounter harsher days immediately.

Chavez and his Bolivarian gangsters have been threatening violent confrontations with everyone since last September’s elections. Indeed, Chavez appears to be longing for a bloody fight.

But perhaps Chavez should be careful about what he wishes for, because violence could erupt unexpectedly in places and ways that no one anticipates.

I believe that 2011 will be a worse year for Venezuela than 2010, in every way.

Tensions are heating up nationally, more even than in the months before April 2002. But this time there’s no opposition leadership to channel and direct the “arrechera” of the Venezuelan pueblo.

Perhaps I’m engaged in a bit of wishful thinking, but I think that Chavez and gangsters have made some very dangerous strategic and tactical mistakes over the past month – dangerous to the both the regime’s survival and also the stability of Venezuela in the near term.

These mistakes include (1) the passel of laws approved unconstitutionally/illegally by the outgoing almost all-PSUV National Assembly; (2) the special powers that Chavez was granted to rule by presidential decree for the coming 18 months; and (3) Chavez’s latest nationwide offensive aimed at stealing privately-owned homes under the pretext of “resettling” thousands of Venezuelans left homeless by heavy rains/flooding in November/December.

Venezuelans returning to their daily lives as of next week also will quickly confront very substantial rises in the prices of everything they consume, but particularly food and medicines.

The numbers are simple: the multi-tiered BsF exchange rate was unified from BsF.2.60 to BsF.4.30 asof 1 January, and Venezuela nowadays thanks to Chavez’s thieving ways imports over 85% of everything that it consumes (mas o menos).

Higher prices, more shortages of everything, and fewer job openings in the private sector, plus more unemployment/poverty and more violent crime as a result. With private estimates of the homicide rate in Venezuela last year ranging from over 17,000 to some 25,000 killed, it’s not difficult to imagine still greater social mayhem in store for the populace during 2011.

I believe that Venezuela’s economy will remain in a slump this year even if the price of Venezuelan crude oil hits $100/bl. Companies aren’t investing except to maintain capacity and maximize profits; even Pdvsa’s good buddy Chevron admitted in 2009 (in one of the leaked Wikileaks embassy cables) that it was taking profits out of its joint ventures with Pdvsa because it had stopped making fresh investments.

Pdvsa is broken. Even at $100/bl Pdvsa cannot generate the revenues it needs to fund its investment plans, maintain its existing operations and also feed the Chavez regime’s voracious fiscal appetite.

Chavez can’t offset the structural decline in oil revenues by hiking non-oil taxes either. And if Chavez continues stealing privately-owned lands, companies and other productive assets, non-oil tax revenues will of course decline.

But Chavez has already launched his presidential campaign. Today Chavez confirmed he will seek re-election at end-2012. This means that the Chavez regime will continue borrowing as much as it possibly can this year.

In fact, the regime officially plans to borrow at least $8 billion in 2011 on top of the roughly $85 billion of total government/Pdvsa debts currently outstanding.

Who knows? Perhaps the regime will manage to find $8 billion in new debt this year.

But the last two debt bond issues floated by the Chavez regime in 2010 came to market at 16% to maturity, worse than Greece, which is to say “Eímaste patí̱same.”

Bolivarian idiots like Jorge Giordani and Rafael Ramirez claim falsely that the revolution/Pdvsa has very substantial untapped borrowing capacity.

But if one calculates Venezuela’s GDP at end-2009 at an average exchange parity in 2010 of BsF6.50/$, the country’s GDP in US dollar terms work out to about $118 billion – vs total government/Pdvsa indebtedness of about $85 billion at end-2010.

Hugo Chavez XIII

03/01/2011 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

The 13th year of Hugo Chavez’s misrule has started.

Chavez has ruled longer than any Venezuelan president since the Andean dictator Juan Vicente Gomez.

Chavez also arguably has inflicted more lasting structural damage on Venezuela’s economy, its political institutions and society than any president in the country’s history.

Petroleos de Venezuela, which generates over 90% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings and is literally the fiscal and industrial spine of the Venezuelan economy, has been destroyed.

Pdvsa today produces about 2.2 million b/d of crude oil compared with over 3.4 million b/d in 1998. Its refineries and upgraders are crumbling and were plagued by at least 17 major explosions/fires in 2010 in which four persons were killed and dozens injured.

Pdvsa boasts that it employs almost 100,000 workers and plans to invest $252 billion between 2010 and end-2015. But it’s all BS and lies. Pdvsa has not completed even one of its planned major expansion projects since officially launching its “Siembra Petrolera” plan in the second half of 2005.

Pdvsa’s financial debt is estimated at almost $28 billion, but its real liabilities including compensation claims by foreign companies whose assets were stolen, plus unpaid suppliers/contractors and others, easily totals over $50 billion.

The national power generation/transmission industry also has been destroyed by Chavez’s misrule, as have the “strategic” steel/iron and aluminum/bauxite industries.

Everything Chavez has stolen has collapsed almost immediately. Venezuela now imports over 85% of the food it consumes thanks to Chavez’s theft of millions of hectares of productive land. Construction activity also has collapsed since Chavez stole the cement, rebar and other construction-related industries.

But, despite Venezuela’s numerous and worsening structural problems, Chavez also still appears to have the upper hand as he begins his 13th year in power.

The lame duck National Assembly, which ends its ignominious five-year session no later than 4 January, has granted Chavez special powers to rule Venezuela by presidential decree for 18 months.

The departing assembly also approved a bunch of new laws that push Venezuela towards a centralized Socialist state that consciously ignores the will of a majority of voters who rejected Chavez’s December 2007 referendum to impose Bolivarian socialism by reforming the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution.

The new National Assembly, which includes 65 opposition legislators from the Democratic Unity Table (MUD), begins its sessions officially on 5 January.

A handful of the MUD’s new lawmakers have voiced hopes that the new assembly will debate the issues and laws with dignified democratic discourse.

MUD’s 65 new legislators also called a press conference on 3 January to invite Venezuelans who voted for them to accompany them to the National Assembly early on 5 January to show their support for Venezuela’s democracy.

But will the new MUD lawmakers even be allowed physical access to the assembly?

Some in Chavista officialdom are saying that the new opposition legislators are welcome in the assembly.

But there also has been chatter among hardcore chavistas about how the revolutionary “pueblo” (i.e. paid street thugs) might decide to physically prevent the new MUD legislators from entering the assembly.

Assuming that the new assembly sessions peacefully and democratically, as it ought to…will its 165 members including the 65 MUD legislators, 2 PPT legislators and 98 PSUV members have any real work to do over the coming 18 months?

Chavez doesn’t need the National Assembly, and legally he can ignore the legislature over the coming 18 months as long as the Supreme Court is in his pocket, which it is.

MUD can protest until its leaders are collectively purple-faced, but the facts are that Chavez can do anything he wishes, and he certainly will.

Some MUD leaders still appear to think that Chavez can (will) be voted out of power democratically in the end-2012 presidential elections.

But I suspect that Chavez will do everything in his power to bury the remains of Venezuelan democracy long before those elections.

Chavez and his local/international supporters will never give up power democratically.

If there’s an end to the Chavez regime, it will be violent and bloody.

But it’s also possible that Chavez will remain in power for many years because the “bravo pueblo” of Bolivar is just a myth.

Perhaps for most Venezuelans, it’s a case of “…mejor vivir de rodillas que morir de pie.”

Special Powers for 18 months

17/12/2010 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

President Hugo Chavez today was granted special powers to rule by presidential decree until June 2012, for a period of 18 months instead of the 12 months that the president requested initially.

National Assembly president Cilia Flores proposed that the special powers given to Chavez should be for 18 months instead of one year. Just two days ago, Flores rejected a proposal from a PSUV deputy to make it 18 months instead of 12.

What changed? Nothing.

Chavez likely planned all along to get special powers for 18 months, but staged a bit of Bolivarian political theater by formally asking for 12 months so that it would appear that the extra 6 months was a spontaneous initiative by the “pueblo” – i.e. Flores and his other thug cronies in the lame duck assembly.

The lame duck National Assembly’s vote probably was unconstitutional, but the new Supreme Court sworn in several days ago will dependably rule for Chavez and the Bolivarian regime.

Several new laws approved in the past week or so create the foundations of a communal model of economic activity and social organization plugged institutionally/bureaucratically into a centralized administration (the federal council of government).

The assembly also has approved legislation that will allow the regime to impose tighter controls over the entire spectrum of information flow, from print media to the Internet and social networks.

Banking is now a “public service,” which makes it much easier for Chavez to nationalize any bank he wishes. The general public’s deposits are now a cat’s whisker away from being devoured by the revolution.

The coming urban and rural land reforms that Chavez reportedly plans to decree will finish uprooting and eradicating capitalist notions of private property rights.

The special powers enabling Chavez to rule by decree have, de facto, suspended the Constitution, habeas corpus and the rule of law. Everything is in his grasp, literally.

Chavez will use the special powers to consolidate his totalitarian rule, imposing by force a retrograde communist economic/political model on a country already broken by 12 years of Bolivarian misrule.

Aqui no pasa nada

17/12/2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments

President Hugo Chavez is the brand, face, voice and supreme leader of the Bolivarian revolution, in effect he is the bulls-eye.

Chavez has claimed for 12 years that the CIA, Colombian paramilitaries, “escualidos” and various other unnamed villains are actively plotting to assassinate him.

Chavez has made this claim at least two dozen times that we know of over the past 12 years, and possibly more. But he has never offered any proof to substantiate his allegations.

His most recent charge: that unnamed Venezuelan “escualidos” have pooled $100 million to kill him.

Chavez’s charge is pure fiction, like Frederick Forsythe’s political thriller novel “Day of the Jackal.”

I asked a good friend in Venezuela’s army who knows about these matters.

There are people in Venezuela, active and former military professionals, who would happily neutralize Chavez permanently as a public service, my friend says.

I ask my friend why it hasn’t happened yet. Cut off the serpent’s head and the body dies, right?

It’s not that simple, he replies.

If Chavez gets struck between the eyes by a wayward meteorite speeding through the galaxy, Venezuela would erupt in political and social chaos that could persist for weeks or even months.

My friend in the Venezuelan army asks me, “Who would take charge after Chavez?”

I can’t answer that, I reply.

It’s not just Chavez, my friend says, explaining that there are “about 50” senior civilian figures in the regime, and perhaps “another 50 more or less” in the armed forces that would “need to be neutralized” at the same time that the president is neutralized.

Neutralized? “Dados de baja,” he says.

Many Cubans deployed inside the armed forces and key government entities also would be targets in a regime-change scenario, my friend adds. “Not all Cubans, only the ones in charge,” he says.

Chavez counts on the Cuban military and security component in Venezuela to back up his regime.

However, the Cubans would be “too occupied defending themselves to help any senior Venezuelan government officials,” my friend says.

Containing the regime’s civilian militia and its gangs of street thugs on motorcycles could be problematic because they are dispersed. But the effectiveness of these groups will be reduced significantly if their leaders inside the regime are neutralized, my friend says.

But my amigo won’t speculate on the timing or circumstances that could trigger a regime-change scenario. There are too many external and internal unknowns and variables, he says.

A majority of Venezuelans are fed up with Chavez. But for a forced regime change scenario to materialize there would have to be a tremendous surge in public support for a radical solution to the problem of Chavez, he says. And that won’t happen anytime soon. “Aqui no paso, ni pasara, nada,” he says.

Hugo’s Coup

17/12/2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments

President Hugo Chavez announced that he has 20 decree-laws in hand and ready to enact as soon as the National Assembly holds the second vote required to approve the special powers law granting him the authority to rule by decree for one year.

No one has seen the decree-laws, and no one knows who drafted the text of the decree-laws that Chavez will issue with the goal of completely transforming Venezuela’s social, economic and political model.

The assembly expects to hold the second vote today on Chavez’s special powers. But last night, legislators approved new banking legislation that declares banks to be a “public service” – which enhances Chavez’s authority to steal any bank at whim.

Today’s El Nacional (subscription only) has a chart that describes what Chavez and his Havana henchmen have in mind as an evil Christmas gift for the Venezuelan people:

*Tougher telecommunications and information technology regulations;

*Financial reforms creating new taxes and tax regulations, modifying monetary and credit policies, and restructuring banking and insurance;

*Operational and institutional reorganization of Venezuela’s security and defense sector, including new disciplinary and military career standards, weapons and related items;

*Eradication of speculation, usury, capital accumulation, monopolies, oligopolies and large rural estates (latifundios);

*Design a new geographic regionalization to reduce high democratic concentrations in some regions, including the creation of new socialist communities and communes;

*Reorder the social use of all urban and rural lands;

*Modify public entities to guarantee the right of access to housing with public and private contributions;

*Establish secure procedures for citizen identification and migration control.

The 20 decree-laws that Chavez already has in hand could be issued as soon as 15 days after the approved law is published in the Official Gazette.

Today is the 17th of December; if the law is approved today and posted in an Extraordinary Gazette with today’s date, Chavez could start issuing his totalitarian decree-laws on 2 January 2011.

The United Democratic Table (MUD in Spanish) announced that it has created a National Coordination Junta to take positions against Chavez’s decree-laws, and keep the people informed. Wow!

It’s very possible that most, if not all, of the decree-laws will be issued by the time MUD’s legislators join the new National Assembly on 5 January.

Chavez and the PSUV thugs that control the lame duck National Assembly are executing a constitutional coup, abusing the institutions of democratic governance to garrote Venezuela’s democracy.

This is the logical climax of a process that has been under way since Chavez first took the oath of presidential office in 1999 on a constitution that he called “moribund.”

Is there anyone in the MUD at this point who still naively believes that good will triumph over evil, that voters will democratically oust Chavez from the presidency at end-2012 so that the Venezuelan nation can be restored?

Chavez and his PSUV gangsters are determined to seize total control over everyone and everything, and are threatening lethal violence against anyone who dares to resist their will.

The democratic spaces that still exist in Venezuela are being snuffed systematically.

Where is the “bravo pueblo” celebrated in Venezuela’s national hymn? Perhaps that “pueblo” was always a myth.

A day late, a dollar short

16/12/2010 in Uncategorized. 7 Comments

The United States government said on 15 December that President Hugo Chavez is “subverting the will of the Venezuelan people” by demanding special powers to rule by decree for one year.

US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in Washington, DC that Chavez “seems to be finding new and creative ways to justify autocratic powers.”

New and creative?

This is the fourth time since 1999 that Chavez has been granted special powers to enact laws by presidential decree.

Chavez is repeating a tried and true scam that he has used successfully three times previously since 1999 to do whatever he pleases without incurring any serious or sustained protests from the US or anyone else.

What’s different now?

These new special powers have been granted to Chavez by a lame duck National Assembly that has only days left in its five-year session.

A new National Assembly was elected on 26 September 2010, but does not begin its session until January 2011.

Critics argue that the lame duck National assembly doesn’t have the constitutional authority to give Chavez special powers beyond the end of the current legislature’s session.

But constitutional technicalities don’t bother Chavez at all.

Chavez has most of the OAS in his pocket, with the notable exception of the CIDH. The Unasur countries – headed by Brazil – are complete hypocrites when it comes to taking a real stand for democracy.

In strategic and tactical terms, the outcome of the 26 September National Assembly elections is of no consequence whatsoever to Chavez.

The lame duck assembly is rushing to approve a slew of new laws that legally consolidate Venezuela’s transformation into a repressive Cuban-style dictatorship backed by corrupt generals, drug traffickers and other rogue states.

What can the democratic opposition do to counter this coup by Chavez?

Diego Arria, among others, has urged the opposition legislators elected to the new National Assembly to invoke an Article 350; i.e. everything that Chavez and the lame duck assembly are doing now is unconstitutional and illegal.

However, the oppo is powerless and cannot do anything to stop Chavez.

The oppo is the minority in the new assembly, and any attempts by oppo legislators to block Chavez from consolidating his gangster regime will be stopped cold by the numerically superior PSUV block.

Forget about legal challenges.

Chavez ensured that a new Supreme Court was handpicked and sworn in before the lame duck National Assembly granted him the special powers.

The new “supremos” certainly will rule against anyone who tries to challenge the legality and constitutionality of the special powers.

The lame duck National Assembly also has approved legislation that expands State controls over all forms of communications media, including the Internet.

The regime’s aim is to silence and repress anyone who dissents or has opinions critical of the regime, including independent news organizations, bloggers and users of social media like Twitter.

Chavez will use these special powers to complete his horrific Bolivarian masterpiece.

Who or what will stop Chavez from enacting by decree the constitutional reforms that were rejected by a majority of voters three years ago?

By the time Chavez is done and his special powers expire at the end of 2011, it may not matter anymore that presidential elections are officially scheduled for December 2012.

Mr. Crowley’s statement that Chavez is “subverting” the will of a majority of the Venezuelan people doesn’t even come close to addressing the monstrous tragedy that is escalating in Venezuela.

Chances of a conciliatory, peaceful democratic outcome are nil, I think.

Chavez and his gangsters already have driven Venezuela beyond the point where peaceful and democratic outcomes are still remotely possible.

Arria and other foes of the Bolivarian regime recently have been declaring that Chavez someday will face justice for his crimes and will spend the rest of his days in a prison cell. But I disagree.

Chavez will remain in power for years to come, or else Chavez will be killed.

However, if (or when) Chavez is killed, Venezuela likely will suffer bloodshed and civil strike on a scale not seen in Latin America since Gaitan was murdered in Bogota in 1948.