True, even Nicolas Maduro preferred to concede defeat rather than taking to the streets. But his concession was like the Chavez one of 2007, "victoria de mierda" but more banal in its content, "defeated by the economic war" that nobody but chavistas seem to understand what it is about. Which allows us to think that the economic war is just a myth a la Cuban embargo.
No point entering into details but from the chavistas I read or heard of today it was all about battles, temporary tactical retreats and whichever military jargon you wish to use. Truly, 15 years of Chavez have brain washed them and now everything is a battle with the unavoidable conclusion that the battle can only end when the other side is, well, annihilated. I do not see how we can plan a transition with such people who clearly see this election as an anomaly, a mere bump, an occasion to reorganize the troops before the final battle. So far, the message of el pueblo has been lost.
And this is worrisome, not necessarily for their war wishes that they may or may not desire to execute when the time comes. The worrisome part in all of this is that chavismo is more astounded by the defeat than we could have fairly expected. Clearly, months of rather very negative polling have not prepared them at all for the possibility that they may just lose the election. Amen of being trashed.
It is of great concern that the surprise of chavismo, their basic frame work and ideological "formation", is making it difficult for them to see what happened, to understand what it means, to bring them to some form of self examination. Maduro's word by themselves read of "dead man walking", the empire and capitalism and an economic war beat him, not the Venezuelan people judging his incompetence. Roy Chaderton, the ineffable Chavez ambassador to wherever, always the failed foreign minister, had the nerve to say in all seriousness that the opposition had a unfair media advantage because the world media followed empire orders against the regime. I now that he is stone faced but surely he cannot have forgotten easily the years when the foreign media SUPPORTED Chavez. And he certainly fails to explain us how this could have possibly helped the opposition facing a media blackout inside Venezuela, foreign or national.
And there is also the "traitor" epithet being easily thrown around, the ones that benefited from Chavez and now turned away. True, you can always call them traitor but at least try to understand why they betrayed you so that next time around you avoid such treason...
A nice little story today tells us a lot about the general mood of chavismo hard core "public servants", those that are in key propaganda and decision sectors. I am talking of the "journalists" and workers of ANTV. This wanna-be Venezuelan C-SPAN is all but. It is the channel through which chavista representatives can promote themselves, usually insulting their opponents with liberal use of propaganda documentaries and the like.
Well, Ramos Allup, the MUD hatchet man on the CNE and one of the engineers of the victory, said that ANTV had to be redrawn fast so it could offer to the country a plural window of opinion. Something that even this blogger promoted this week end as one of the first measures to be taken by the incoming Assembly, an easier way to open the airwaves with a true public network service than starting anew. ANTV workers were not only not amused but offended that their "professional" work could be questioned. In fact, they consider that their "conquest of information rights" cannot be challenged. They have been great journalists, according to their criteria...
Clearly, chavismo had become a very conservative, close minded group. It badly needs a stay in the opposition, a spa stay for mind unclogging we could say. That defeat is not only good for them, but necessary as well.
Monday, 7 December 2015
Sunday, 6 December 2015
A vote for the times
What happened today in Venezuela is truly momentous, better than the wildest hopes the opposition could have ever had a year ago. In the last 3-4 months the objective of a nice victory was getting clearer, but tonight the preliminary result announcing a 2 to 1 victory in seats? No way, Jose!
As I type this I am half drunk with the bottle I drowned on my own over the excruciating long wait of the night. No, I am no lush, I did the pilgrimage for a last vote to San Felipe now that I live mostly in Caracas. I have not gotten around to change my district (next in Petare to help Ocariz). But I had kept that semi cheap Chilean champagne that I did not drink in 2009 keeping it for when chavismo would be ousted. It had to wait 5 years in my fridge and me alone but willing. My stupor is accompanied by the streets which are suddenly awake with caravans of opposition supporters in this very chavista state which may be getting back to old former governor Lapi days.
They are right to celebrate as this election marks the end of an era, at last. Chavismo cannot recover from such as stunning disaster that not even Cuban "expertise" could avoid. There are still 17 seats to be decided, too close to call, but the opposition already has secured the 3/5 supernumerary majority and by getting a few of the 17 it may not reach the fabled 2/3 majority needed for certain laws but it will be strong enough to offer a credible resistance against a desperate regime. The future of chavismo is bleak, and it certainly does not pass through its current structure and mood. Implosion is in the future and speedy internal reform is a must if it does not want to disappear, if it wants to remain a leftist option in Venezuela. Appealing crassly to Chavez memory was a mistake, they killed the idol. Now they are on their own.
There is no need to inquire deeply in the causes of the rout. Empty shelves and 200% inflation say it all. As I wrote often, in the last two years the regime has had the chance to take some economic measures that would not have avoided the crisis but made it less politically damaging. But it did not. The regime was hostage to utmost currency exchange arbitration abuse and drug trafficking, all protected by the upper army cadres. What happened in the end was that the populist government lost contact with the populi. And that was that.
What comes next is an exciting page in our history and renewed blogging fervor from yours truly. Only one thing can be more interesting to blog about than the downfall of a regime: the birth of a new order.
Make no mistake, the road is still flush with ambushes. A narco regime was stunned by a defeat they truly never believed could happen. But as the international penal law starts closing in there is no telling what desperate measures they could be willing to risk. Keep in mind that in spite of the disaster, a 40% still voted for the regime. A quick renewal could mean a quick return.
Yet, the economic disaster will kill political support for whatever system comes next and even that 2/3 potential victory will require for the opposition to reach out to chavismo to avoid the worst, something that could even include an increased civil war. Yes, the daily number of violent death in the country are already the signs of a civil war waged between drug and corrupt gangs for their turf, both against the common citizen.
But how to deal with that is best left for the coming days. Tonight we must celebrate one thing: el pueblo spoke and proved that freebies and promises of freebies are not enough. In the end maybe democratic values are not the decisive factors when voting, but accounting is. And demanding accounting for the rulers is where democracy starts. Let's savor that moment when Venezuelans put aside political polarization, artificially created class and race divides and went all together, from negritos to catires, from tierruos to sifrinos, to say that enough is enough, that equality is not standing all together in line for a little bit of milk.
As I type this I am half drunk with the bottle I drowned on my own over the excruciating long wait of the night. No, I am no lush, I did the pilgrimage for a last vote to San Felipe now that I live mostly in Caracas. I have not gotten around to change my district (next in Petare to help Ocariz). But I had kept that semi cheap Chilean champagne that I did not drink in 2009 keeping it for when chavismo would be ousted. It had to wait 5 years in my fridge and me alone but willing. My stupor is accompanied by the streets which are suddenly awake with caravans of opposition supporters in this very chavista state which may be getting back to old former governor Lapi days.
They are right to celebrate as this election marks the end of an era, at last. Chavismo cannot recover from such as stunning disaster that not even Cuban "expertise" could avoid. There are still 17 seats to be decided, too close to call, but the opposition already has secured the 3/5 supernumerary majority and by getting a few of the 17 it may not reach the fabled 2/3 majority needed for certain laws but it will be strong enough to offer a credible resistance against a desperate regime. The future of chavismo is bleak, and it certainly does not pass through its current structure and mood. Implosion is in the future and speedy internal reform is a must if it does not want to disappear, if it wants to remain a leftist option in Venezuela. Appealing crassly to Chavez memory was a mistake, they killed the idol. Now they are on their own.
There is no need to inquire deeply in the causes of the rout. Empty shelves and 200% inflation say it all. As I wrote often, in the last two years the regime has had the chance to take some economic measures that would not have avoided the crisis but made it less politically damaging. But it did not. The regime was hostage to utmost currency exchange arbitration abuse and drug trafficking, all protected by the upper army cadres. What happened in the end was that the populist government lost contact with the populi. And that was that.
What comes next is an exciting page in our history and renewed blogging fervor from yours truly. Only one thing can be more interesting to blog about than the downfall of a regime: the birth of a new order.
Make no mistake, the road is still flush with ambushes. A narco regime was stunned by a defeat they truly never believed could happen. But as the international penal law starts closing in there is no telling what desperate measures they could be willing to risk. Keep in mind that in spite of the disaster, a 40% still voted for the regime. A quick renewal could mean a quick return.
Yet, the economic disaster will kill political support for whatever system comes next and even that 2/3 potential victory will require for the opposition to reach out to chavismo to avoid the worst, something that could even include an increased civil war. Yes, the daily number of violent death in the country are already the signs of a civil war waged between drug and corrupt gangs for their turf, both against the common citizen.
But how to deal with that is best left for the coming days. Tonight we must celebrate one thing: el pueblo spoke and proved that freebies and promises of freebies are not enough. In the end maybe democratic values are not the decisive factors when voting, but accounting is. And demanding accounting for the rulers is where democracy starts. Let's savor that moment when Venezuelans put aside political polarization, artificially created class and race divides and went all together, from negritos to catires, from tierruos to sifrinos, to say that enough is enough, that equality is not standing all together in line for a little bit of milk.
Election day 2015 post
0:46
Tibisay spoketh. It ain't pretty for the regime, a 2 to 1 victory for the opposition. Still 17 seats in play that will decide whether a 2/3 supernumerary majority is reached (and the end of the regime as we knew it). Maduro bitched but accepted with lame references.
Meanwhile suddenly San Felipe is awakening.
And this concludes our election day post. Next? Governor elections December 2016 or... earlier presidential.
11:58
In two minutes we are "the day after"
11:47
Tic-tac, Tic-tac.....
10:54
An insisting rumor is that the opposition would have got 2/3 of the Assembly! 113 seats!
If this is indeed true it not only goes beyond our widest hopes and expectations but it will create a speedy downfall of the regime. Buuut.... leaving all the mess for us to fix with all the political consequences.....
10:23
JUST BREAKING!
9:56
It is getting more difficult for the regime to hide the opposition victory. As usual, when compared to, say, recent Argentina elections, the Venezuelan electoral system is pathetic.
On the good side, if rumors I get are confirmed my predictions may turn out to have been good. Note: I would not mind at all being wrong and that the MUD gets 2/3. :-)
9:35
Nothing to report. The CNE does its usual waiting game while they try to cook up the results so as to make not looks so bad for the regime.
At least some figures of the opposotion have gone to twitter to claim victory. We put pressure whichever way we can.
San Felipe is quiet and I am at peace. Few fireworks and coming from different places than usual. Maybe a good omen.
7:19
Looks that there will be a solid victory for the opposition. Maybe I should change my predictions to case 3? Or make up in a hurry a case 4? With 25% spread and a 2/3 majority?
7:11
And there is this.
7:10
The illegal voting hours extension is creating quite a scandal. Best admission that the regime lost the election.
7:02
Apparently in some Zulia districts the PSUV forces people to vote "assisted", being nice enough to push the buttons for the voter least this one pulls a muscle or something.
6:57
Got back in service an old modem and got some Internet. My normal provider, Intercable, not only killed my Internet but also killed my phone! And TV while at it. And no, I did not forget to pay for the service.
Right now the usual ruckus on illegally extending voting hours even though most centers are done with voters. The usual bring in the vote despair and those voting that should not be doing so.
6:06 pm
Made it safely to San Felipe. Roads near empty. Saw one of the "mobile CNE" voting center for poor or distant or hard to reach areas. Big line, red shirts, a PSUV red tent right in front. No pressure...
Voted fast. But next voting station had a huge line. Voting machines down, no permission to start voting manually yet.
No Internet at home. Down many areas of the country. Need to update through my cel phone. A big pain you know where
9:47
To try to go around the news blockade and censorship the MUD did a few things, such as a Youtube channel devoted to election day incidents and results later on. So do particulars with new portals in the provinces. This one from Margarita.
9:41
About to leave Caracas. So far nothing too far fetched as far as I can tell.
But there are illegal things like this:
7:20 AM
There are traditions, but....
In 2013 I wrote what I was hoping to be my last election day post. Today I am not going to write down what had become a tradition of sorts for this blog. Since that fateful April 2013 my life and moods and priorities have experienced dramatic changes. It has been for me a significant effort to write down that recent series of YV-X articles on the election held today (YV is the international code for Venezuela). As a consequence of erratic writing and unrestrained bitching all my blog parameters have gone down (to the levels I had in 2010, which were already respectable nevertheless). The secret of successful blogging is regularity in publication and mood, if possible. And that I have not been able to provide. Yet these election day posts were usually my top visited posts of the year, which makes me feel a little bit guilty toward faithful readers.
In addition this year I have not left for Yaracuy to vote. yet. The thing is that I am basically living in Caracas now for many, many reasons, from personal security to having to take care of my SO (now spouse, by the way). During part of today I will be travelling so as to reach San Felipe before polls close. I thought about not voting but I learned that the San Felipe district had become competitive and I would hate myself if we lost it for a single vote. Also, after years of losing elections, for once I could place myself on the winning side.........
I will try from the road to Tweet or Instagram things if I come across noteworthy moments. And hopefully after 5 PM I may be able to cover some and update this post. But it is open so that readers who may want to share electoral information can go ahead in comments if they please as I will not be able to purvey then. Because with the arrest of Lopez and exile of others and my own changes I have lost track of my informants and I am now just a spectator like you guys. O tempora..
Tibisay spoketh. It ain't pretty for the regime, a 2 to 1 victory for the opposition. Still 17 seats in play that will decide whether a 2/3 supernumerary majority is reached (and the end of the regime as we knew it). Maduro bitched but accepted with lame references.
Meanwhile suddenly San Felipe is awakening.
And this concludes our election day post. Next? Governor elections December 2016 or... earlier presidential.
11:58
In two minutes we are "the day after"
11:47
Tic-tac, Tic-tac.....
10:54
An insisting rumor is that the opposition would have got 2/3 of the Assembly! 113 seats!
If this is indeed true it not only goes beyond our widest hopes and expectations but it will create a speedy downfall of the regime. Buuut.... leaving all the mess for us to fix with all the political consequences.....
10:23
JUST BREAKING!
BREAKING NEWS! Blog Venezuela News and Views calls the election! pic.twitter.com/TUczynRDYu— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) December 7, 20159:56
It is getting more difficult for the regime to hide the opposition victory. As usual, when compared to, say, recent Argentina elections, the Venezuelan electoral system is pathetic.
On the good side, if rumors I get are confirmed my predictions may turn out to have been good. Note: I would not mind at all being wrong and that the MUD gets 2/3. :-)
9:35
Nothing to report. The CNE does its usual waiting game while they try to cook up the results so as to make not looks so bad for the regime.
At least some figures of the opposotion have gone to twitter to claim victory. We put pressure whichever way we can.
San Felipe is quiet and I am at peace. Few fireworks and coming from different places than usual. Maybe a good omen.
7:19
Looks that there will be a solid victory for the opposition. Maybe I should change my predictions to case 3? Or make up in a hurry a case 4? With 25% spread and a 2/3 majority?
7:11
And there is this.
A fetish/cursed bottle since 2009 in my fridge. Is this the night? pic.twitter.com/oEviAGEAAB— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) December 6, 20157:10
The illegal voting hours extension is creating quite a scandal. Best admission that the regime lost the election.
7:02
Apparently in some Zulia districts the PSUV forces people to vote "assisted", being nice enough to push the buttons for the voter least this one pulls a muscle or something.
6:57
Got back in service an old modem and got some Internet. My normal provider, Intercable, not only killed my Internet but also killed my phone! And TV while at it. And no, I did not forget to pay for the service.
Right now the usual ruckus on illegally extending voting hours even though most centers are done with voters. The usual bring in the vote despair and those voting that should not be doing so.
6:06 pm
Made it safely to San Felipe. Roads near empty. Saw one of the "mobile CNE" voting center for poor or distant or hard to reach areas. Big line, red shirts, a PSUV red tent right in front. No pressure...
Voted fast. But next voting station had a huge line. Voting machines down, no permission to start voting manually yet.
No Internet at home. Down many areas of the country. Need to update through my cel phone. A big pain you know where
9:47
To try to go around the news blockade and censorship the MUD did a few things, such as a Youtube channel devoted to election day incidents and results later on. So do particulars with new portals in the provinces. This one from Margarita.
9:41
About to leave Caracas. So far nothing too far fetched as far as I can tell.
But there are illegal things like this:
En La Alta Florida, Caracas pic.twitter.com/rXMsE6GE5E— Iruña Urruticoechea (@urru_urru) December 6, 2015Observe the intimidation tactic of the chavista in that illegal PSUV "information tent" too close from a voting center, taking a picture of the one documenting the abuse.7:20 AM
There are traditions, but....
In 2013 I wrote what I was hoping to be my last election day post. Today I am not going to write down what had become a tradition of sorts for this blog. Since that fateful April 2013 my life and moods and priorities have experienced dramatic changes. It has been for me a significant effort to write down that recent series of YV-X articles on the election held today (YV is the international code for Venezuela). As a consequence of erratic writing and unrestrained bitching all my blog parameters have gone down (to the levels I had in 2010, which were already respectable nevertheless). The secret of successful blogging is regularity in publication and mood, if possible. And that I have not been able to provide. Yet these election day posts were usually my top visited posts of the year, which makes me feel a little bit guilty toward faithful readers.
In addition this year I have not left for Yaracuy to vote. yet. The thing is that I am basically living in Caracas now for many, many reasons, from personal security to having to take care of my SO (now spouse, by the way). During part of today I will be travelling so as to reach San Felipe before polls close. I thought about not voting but I learned that the San Felipe district had become competitive and I would hate myself if we lost it for a single vote. Also, after years of losing elections, for once I could place myself on the winning side.........
I will try from the road to Tweet or Instagram things if I come across noteworthy moments. And hopefully after 5 PM I may be able to cover some and update this post. But it is open so that readers who may want to share electoral information can go ahead in comments if they please as I will not be able to purvey then. Because with the arrest of Lopez and exile of others and my own changes I have lost track of my informants and I am now just a spectator like you guys. O tempora..
The decalogue of a new opposition (eventually?) led National Assembly
A thought exercise first. If the MUD opposition alliance gains a majority in the new National Assembly, who is the opposition? Maduro or the MUD?
This being said, when the National Assembly settles in next January which could be the initial measures that can prove new times have come, even if there a simple majority of seats?
Before the swearing in. In no particular order, as they come to mind during my morning coffee.
1) Announce the new directors of ANTV, the C-span of sorts. This network, mostly cable, is one the propaganda tools of the regime. It is also the network that the MUD can reopen to public debate and democracy from day one. Voiding this way the need to buy back one the private networks bought by regime mystery figures. ANTV would go in a few days from the least watched network to the most watched in Venezuela.
2) Announce that control of the Assembly will be all in the hands of the MUD. BUT... offering two or three commissions to chavismo as a good gesture to start a useful debate. After the sectarian years of Diosdado Cabello at the head, that would improve the political climate greatly, nation wide. Note: that measure can be strengthened by the MUD offering these commissions chairs to PSUV representatives not associated with previous sectarian practices: folks like Cabello or Eekhout cannot chair any commission.
3) Announce before Christmas, or even next week, who will be the new Assembly chair, so as to have a forceful spokesperson to counter regime's last minute treacheries.
4) Announce that any Maduro's initiative before the Assembly is sworn in will be dead on arrival, that is, will not be funded and legally reverted. The simple objective here is to announce regime's treachery before this one is even proposed, countering from the start any propaganda effect.
5) Announce that from day one the press corps will be allowed to monitor live the debates of the Assembly. Yet announcing that the other rules of the Assembly will be kept as is for the first year (to teach the regime representatives a lesson in democracy).
And announce the first laws that will be discussed starting day 1.
6) An amnesty law. Since there is no way to have fair trials the new assembly has to assume a provisional guilty status of the political prisoners until at a later date the unfair and infamous trials can be reversed. By proclaiming an amnesty law the opposition thus in a way recognizes the sentences but also gets to free all political prisoners and even allow the return of many political exiles. Leopoldo Lopez back in the streets with his acquired Mandela status courtesy of the regime clumsiness, will be the nightmare of the executive power of Maduro...
7) A budget reform to guarantee that local financial needs are met as intended. This will strike at the heart of the regime financial muscle. Chavez had managed by all sorts of tricks to deprive the states and city halls of a large chunk of what constitutionally should have gone to them. On one hand the regime gained a weakening of local authorities and on the other Chavez gained more direct patronage. Yes, such a measure would appear to strengthen the existing large majority of chavista governors, but it will also force then to give to their own opposition city halls the funds they require to function, a dramatic gain for some town halls that the regime has sabotaged to the extreme. Two notes: the regime should willingly sign in such a reform because it will get a more effective help from the local administrations to solve the humanitarian crisis at hand. And the governors have only one year left in their tenure so it will be difficult for them to use that windfall efficiently enough to build a reelection machinery.
8) An administrative reform of the comptrollers office to stop the practice of depriving politicians of their rights without the legal ruling in court: inahabilitaciones. Currently an obscure bureaucrat at the order of the regime can simply forbid so and so to run for election or become a public employee.
9) An anti expropriation bill. This way the recent abuses such as those of SUNDEE, Dakazo and the like will be stopped unless the regime previews a fair return before proceeding to expropriation. A way to restore a minimum of trust to bring back some investments to the country.
10) A bill to review the functioning of the expropriations done before. Those which have been a failure should be returned free of charge (and indemnity for the robbed properties?) to the owners who still want to get them back. If indemnity cannot be offered right now, at least offer them tax breaks for a few years to allow them to restart the business.
I am not including laws to revert some of the ruinous social programs. After all inflation will take care of their undoing and the regime executive privileges would force Maduro's combo to finance them at the very least through less corruption. In fact it will be cheap talk to proclaim the Assembly support for existing programs"as is". Also some unpopular measures such as the price of gas, are left at Maduro's doorstep. The common thread in the above Decalogue is to restore some trust in the battered political and economical needs of the country, to jump start what can be jump started legally through the specific constitutional powers of the assembly. The Assembly is not closing down on the regime's alleged reforms, it is building on them by correcting excesses. A fine line but a line worth threading.
And by announcing such type of laws before starting audits and inquiries on corruption would be a good PR operation, the more so that through ANTV and a reform of CONATEL, the media regulation agency, the MUD will have a way to counter the communication abuses of the regime.
Of course, if the opposition gets a 3/5 or 2/3 majority things will be simplified, and we can even foresee a regime collapse sped up through these very simple initial measures.
NOTE: I list all of these but let's not forget that there will be a full month in between the election and the swearing in, a period long enough for the regime to do enough treachery to stop some of these initiatives. A good measure on how to fight for the next thousand measures required will proceed....
This being said, when the National Assembly settles in next January which could be the initial measures that can prove new times have come, even if there a simple majority of seats?
Before the swearing in. In no particular order, as they come to mind during my morning coffee.
1) Announce the new directors of ANTV, the C-span of sorts. This network, mostly cable, is one the propaganda tools of the regime. It is also the network that the MUD can reopen to public debate and democracy from day one. Voiding this way the need to buy back one the private networks bought by regime mystery figures. ANTV would go in a few days from the least watched network to the most watched in Venezuela.
2) Announce that control of the Assembly will be all in the hands of the MUD. BUT... offering two or three commissions to chavismo as a good gesture to start a useful debate. After the sectarian years of Diosdado Cabello at the head, that would improve the political climate greatly, nation wide. Note: that measure can be strengthened by the MUD offering these commissions chairs to PSUV representatives not associated with previous sectarian practices: folks like Cabello or Eekhout cannot chair any commission.
3) Announce before Christmas, or even next week, who will be the new Assembly chair, so as to have a forceful spokesperson to counter regime's last minute treacheries.
4) Announce that any Maduro's initiative before the Assembly is sworn in will be dead on arrival, that is, will not be funded and legally reverted. The simple objective here is to announce regime's treachery before this one is even proposed, countering from the start any propaganda effect.
5) Announce that from day one the press corps will be allowed to monitor live the debates of the Assembly. Yet announcing that the other rules of the Assembly will be kept as is for the first year (to teach the regime representatives a lesson in democracy).
And announce the first laws that will be discussed starting day 1.
6) An amnesty law. Since there is no way to have fair trials the new assembly has to assume a provisional guilty status of the political prisoners until at a later date the unfair and infamous trials can be reversed. By proclaiming an amnesty law the opposition thus in a way recognizes the sentences but also gets to free all political prisoners and even allow the return of many political exiles. Leopoldo Lopez back in the streets with his acquired Mandela status courtesy of the regime clumsiness, will be the nightmare of the executive power of Maduro...
7) A budget reform to guarantee that local financial needs are met as intended. This will strike at the heart of the regime financial muscle. Chavez had managed by all sorts of tricks to deprive the states and city halls of a large chunk of what constitutionally should have gone to them. On one hand the regime gained a weakening of local authorities and on the other Chavez gained more direct patronage. Yes, such a measure would appear to strengthen the existing large majority of chavista governors, but it will also force then to give to their own opposition city halls the funds they require to function, a dramatic gain for some town halls that the regime has sabotaged to the extreme. Two notes: the regime should willingly sign in such a reform because it will get a more effective help from the local administrations to solve the humanitarian crisis at hand. And the governors have only one year left in their tenure so it will be difficult for them to use that windfall efficiently enough to build a reelection machinery.
8) An administrative reform of the comptrollers office to stop the practice of depriving politicians of their rights without the legal ruling in court: inahabilitaciones. Currently an obscure bureaucrat at the order of the regime can simply forbid so and so to run for election or become a public employee.
9) An anti expropriation bill. This way the recent abuses such as those of SUNDEE, Dakazo and the like will be stopped unless the regime previews a fair return before proceeding to expropriation. A way to restore a minimum of trust to bring back some investments to the country.
10) A bill to review the functioning of the expropriations done before. Those which have been a failure should be returned free of charge (and indemnity for the robbed properties?) to the owners who still want to get them back. If indemnity cannot be offered right now, at least offer them tax breaks for a few years to allow them to restart the business.
I am not including laws to revert some of the ruinous social programs. After all inflation will take care of their undoing and the regime executive privileges would force Maduro's combo to finance them at the very least through less corruption. In fact it will be cheap talk to proclaim the Assembly support for existing programs"as is". Also some unpopular measures such as the price of gas, are left at Maduro's doorstep. The common thread in the above Decalogue is to restore some trust in the battered political and economical needs of the country, to jump start what can be jump started legally through the specific constitutional powers of the assembly. The Assembly is not closing down on the regime's alleged reforms, it is building on them by correcting excesses. A fine line but a line worth threading.
And by announcing such type of laws before starting audits and inquiries on corruption would be a good PR operation, the more so that through ANTV and a reform of CONATEL, the media regulation agency, the MUD will have a way to counter the communication abuses of the regime.
Of course, if the opposition gets a 3/5 or 2/3 majority things will be simplified, and we can even foresee a regime collapse sped up through these very simple initial measures.
NOTE: I list all of these but let's not forget that there will be a full month in between the election and the swearing in, a period long enough for the regime to do enough treachery to stop some of these initiatives. A good measure on how to fight for the next thousand measures required will proceed....
Saturday, 5 December 2015
The truth on the weeks after (elections YV-11)
So tomorrow we vote. And what will happen next?
First, a mea culpa of sorts. Until 2-3 weeks ago I still thought that the regime was going to find a way to suspend the election. It did not (well, it still has about 8 hours left). From this we can conclude that the regime is so aware of its defeat, and so aware that there is no way to recover part of the lost ground in a short time, that it decided to go ahead anyway and see what happens next. For me, that there are elections, is paradoxically a way for the regime to recognize in advance that they lost and cannot turn around the result in a "good and timely manner".
Tomorrow they certainly will do their utmost to gain votes even by forcing people to vote, even by carrying busloads of people at 10 PM to vote, etc... After all they even jailed the head of Sucre district police and keep the police in their barracks so the colectivos of Sucre will have a free reign of terror to "bring in the vote". Yet, no matter what, these last minute despair tactics will be limited in scope (the world is watching) and they cannot change the fundamental event of the election: the power shift, the end of chavismo grip over the collective imaginary.
What happens tomorrow and Monday I have written about. Now as a responsible blogger I should pen down what I think may happen in the next weeks.
There are lots of OpEd around, speculating on what legally the new assembly can do whether the opposition MUD gains a simple majority or a supernumerary 2/3 majority. Other people already discuss the agreements that the regime and the opposition will have to reach. There is even talk of civility and Harina P.A.N. returning to our every day lives and shelves. I am not going to enter these discussions since even Monday morning, results in hand, it will be dangerous to speculate.
The reason that I do not want to partake in the guessing game is that we are not dealing here with a normal democratic regime which has become, shall we say, a little tense over the last decades. The regime has reduced itself to a gang of thugs and narco traffickers and with such people you cannot discuss, you cannot make an agreement. They eliminate you or you eliminate them first. This is the logic of street gangs. Force. Period.
For a speculation to make any sense it should start with the basic effect that the result will have over the inner divisions of chavismo. This movement can be divided roughly in three, for the purposes of this discussion.
One group has it all on line and will fight for its survival until the end. I am talking of course of the higher up in the regime which has dabbled in phenomenal corruption and, apparently, also ALL in drug trafficking now that we know that first lady Cilia Flores nephews are into DEA custody. This group that includes Cabello and Maduro are willing to go to the deep end.
The second group is the wavering one. Those did benefit from the regime but neither to the extremes of the first group, or not as much as they would have liked to. The point for that group is that many do not feel the need to immolate themselves for the sake of the first group.
The last group is formed by the "transactional" chavistas (public employees, mision beneficiaries). As long as their livelihood is not unduly threatened they will be unwilling to immolate themselves, the more so that the regime has proven himself unable to sustain its financial support. We could add a fourth group, the ideological one, but I think it will spread across the three groups, the more so that part of that radical group does not like Maduro or Cabello.
Now, what will truly happen depends on how these groups will individually react to tomorrow's result. That is the key at to what changes may be possible. We could see either a speedy downfall of the regime or an attempt at outright repression. But "negotiations" for a transition will only be made possible if chavismo finally divides publicly with an important faction deciding to seat down and talk with the opposition.
What can bring this about? Not the actual number of seats in the Assembly. After all, with the control exerted over all the branches of power the regime has many ways to limit the reach of the new assembly even if that one gets the magical 2/3 supernumerary. No, what will really affect chavismo is its actual vote, and how far from the opposition it will be. And this nuanced to some specific local results.
For example a 10% vote difference may still allow for a certain cohesion within chavismo. However if in spite of a that rather good result for chavismo we have some noted figures bite the dust anyway, like radical evil Jaua in Miranda, then all demons may get loose. Or if you prefer, the MUD wins by 15% but Jaua survives and chavismo retains a majority in ten states then the impact is not that bad and chavismo may want to try arm twisting for size.
Finally if the opposition manages a 20% spread, even if it does not get the 2/3 majority, chavismo will simply implode.
A final note before concluding this entry. Do not forget that the MUD is an electoral alliance and that inside it there are groups only too willing to make deals with chavismo, like the representatives that will be elected under the Lara governor wing, Falcon. Or even Ramos Allup needing to protect some of his relatives involved in juicy bolibourgeois deals. The MUD is not an alliance of saints. The MUD is an alliance of people forced to do so if they do not want to be politically annihilated. For the MUD to keep its resolve, to remain united to forge ahead with the displacement of the regime, it needs at the very least a 20% victory margin over the PSUV.
So there you are. Do not read too much into tea leaves or constitutional manuals. What comes next is the browbeating of a gang of thugs with as little as possible of collateral damage.
First, a mea culpa of sorts. Until 2-3 weeks ago I still thought that the regime was going to find a way to suspend the election. It did not (well, it still has about 8 hours left). From this we can conclude that the regime is so aware of its defeat, and so aware that there is no way to recover part of the lost ground in a short time, that it decided to go ahead anyway and see what happens next. For me, that there are elections, is paradoxically a way for the regime to recognize in advance that they lost and cannot turn around the result in a "good and timely manner".
Tomorrow they certainly will do their utmost to gain votes even by forcing people to vote, even by carrying busloads of people at 10 PM to vote, etc... After all they even jailed the head of Sucre district police and keep the police in their barracks so the colectivos of Sucre will have a free reign of terror to "bring in the vote". Yet, no matter what, these last minute despair tactics will be limited in scope (the world is watching) and they cannot change the fundamental event of the election: the power shift, the end of chavismo grip over the collective imaginary.
What happens tomorrow and Monday I have written about. Now as a responsible blogger I should pen down what I think may happen in the next weeks.
There are lots of OpEd around, speculating on what legally the new assembly can do whether the opposition MUD gains a simple majority or a supernumerary 2/3 majority. Other people already discuss the agreements that the regime and the opposition will have to reach. There is even talk of civility and Harina P.A.N. returning to our every day lives and shelves. I am not going to enter these discussions since even Monday morning, results in hand, it will be dangerous to speculate.
The reason that I do not want to partake in the guessing game is that we are not dealing here with a normal democratic regime which has become, shall we say, a little tense over the last decades. The regime has reduced itself to a gang of thugs and narco traffickers and with such people you cannot discuss, you cannot make an agreement. They eliminate you or you eliminate them first. This is the logic of street gangs. Force. Period.
For a speculation to make any sense it should start with the basic effect that the result will have over the inner divisions of chavismo. This movement can be divided roughly in three, for the purposes of this discussion.
One group has it all on line and will fight for its survival until the end. I am talking of course of the higher up in the regime which has dabbled in phenomenal corruption and, apparently, also ALL in drug trafficking now that we know that first lady Cilia Flores nephews are into DEA custody. This group that includes Cabello and Maduro are willing to go to the deep end.
The second group is the wavering one. Those did benefit from the regime but neither to the extremes of the first group, or not as much as they would have liked to. The point for that group is that many do not feel the need to immolate themselves for the sake of the first group.
The last group is formed by the "transactional" chavistas (public employees, mision beneficiaries). As long as their livelihood is not unduly threatened they will be unwilling to immolate themselves, the more so that the regime has proven himself unable to sustain its financial support. We could add a fourth group, the ideological one, but I think it will spread across the three groups, the more so that part of that radical group does not like Maduro or Cabello.
Now, what will truly happen depends on how these groups will individually react to tomorrow's result. That is the key at to what changes may be possible. We could see either a speedy downfall of the regime or an attempt at outright repression. But "negotiations" for a transition will only be made possible if chavismo finally divides publicly with an important faction deciding to seat down and talk with the opposition.
What can bring this about? Not the actual number of seats in the Assembly. After all, with the control exerted over all the branches of power the regime has many ways to limit the reach of the new assembly even if that one gets the magical 2/3 supernumerary. No, what will really affect chavismo is its actual vote, and how far from the opposition it will be. And this nuanced to some specific local results.
For example a 10% vote difference may still allow for a certain cohesion within chavismo. However if in spite of a that rather good result for chavismo we have some noted figures bite the dust anyway, like radical evil Jaua in Miranda, then all demons may get loose. Or if you prefer, the MUD wins by 15% but Jaua survives and chavismo retains a majority in ten states then the impact is not that bad and chavismo may want to try arm twisting for size.
Finally if the opposition manages a 20% spread, even if it does not get the 2/3 majority, chavismo will simply implode.
A final note before concluding this entry. Do not forget that the MUD is an electoral alliance and that inside it there are groups only too willing to make deals with chavismo, like the representatives that will be elected under the Lara governor wing, Falcon. Or even Ramos Allup needing to protect some of his relatives involved in juicy bolibourgeois deals. The MUD is not an alliance of saints. The MUD is an alliance of people forced to do so if they do not want to be politically annihilated. For the MUD to keep its resolve, to remain united to forge ahead with the displacement of the regime, it needs at the very least a 20% victory margin over the PSUV.
So there you are. Do not read too much into tea leaves or constitutional manuals. What comes next is the browbeating of a gang of thugs with as little as possible of collateral damage.
Final prediction for this blog (election YV-10)
Before this blog makes it final prediction I need to repeat again a few things:
1- This is an extremely emotional election, harnessed by powerful blackmail and fear campaign tactics. Voting patterns can change significantly as late as Sunday.
2- Poll are unanimous in predicting a MUD alliance victory. Yet, Datanalisis always in search of notoriety has announced this week that Maduro recovered personally 11% of its "popularity" without explaining what this meant to their earlier numbers. Someone pointed out that Luis Vicente Leon could not rest his ever present wish to be in the forefront, to "declare just for the sake of declaring".
3- This blogger has not performed the painstaking analysis done in previous years. Then he got it right more often than wrong. This time around I will limit myself to examine the possibilities since there was no time, nor will to do the work for personal reasons. Let's say charitably that I base myself on memories and educated gut feeling district per district, under strict prudent assertions, from older data.
4- And of course this assumes that votes will be indeed counted as they come. But let's not be picky about that now as predicting the extent of actual ballot stuffing cannot be predicted. For simplicity let's assume that the regime will count the ballots.
This being said, as in the previous installment, I have divided the 167 seats to be voted on as "safe" "leaning" and "toss up". Let's just say that "safe" means 85% probability of victory, "leaning" 70% probability of victory and toss up, less than that. Thus a final prediction means an arithmetic calculation out of the 5 groups.
Case 1: 10% difference between MUD and PSUV
A narrow victory for the opposition, due to the gerrymandering of electoral districts and the bonus for the PSUV coming from states which are very dependent on social programs.
The opposition would gain between 86 and 92. Majority is 84. A 10% popular vote majority may result in a squeaky parliamentary majority.
Case 2: 15% difference between MUD and PSUV
Things improve a little bit for the opposition but the gerrymandering still plays heavily against the comfortable majority the winner would get in a normally functioning democracy.
Now the opposition gets between 93 and 98, barely 5 seats more than before.
Case 3; 20% spread between MUD and PSUV
This is still not good enough. The MUD needs a 3/5 super-majority to be able to resit the pressure and abuse of the regime. and be "veto" proof on some type of legislation. That is, the MUD needs to gain 101 seats.
In this case things look a little bit better as the gerrymandering effect starts fading some. The opposition MUD would be getting at least 100 seats and as much as 105. The super-majority number being 101, it is clear that the opposition getting less than 20% more votes than the PSUV will allow the regime to postpone the debacle.
I am not going to calculate what is the spread the MUD needs to get the 2/3 majority in parliament which would mean the end of the regime but I guess it is at least a 25% vote advantage, a majority that as of now I do not see happening. Too many people are willing to bitch about Maduro but once in front of the voting machine, their vote becomes conservative, conservative having become PSUV. In democracy a conservative vote is always the one given to a party that has been more than ten years in office, a situation that people simply are afraid to change.
My final prediction?
I think I am going to go with case 2 with a few provisions. There may be a couple of independents squeaking in. Some upsets may not happen.
So I am going to go with 96 seats and 16% more votes for MUD than for PSUV. Why not? As crazy as any other prediction to be found around. My optimist outcome is 18% ahead with 101 and my pessimist is 13% with 92.
1- This is an extremely emotional election, harnessed by powerful blackmail and fear campaign tactics. Voting patterns can change significantly as late as Sunday.
2- Poll are unanimous in predicting a MUD alliance victory. Yet, Datanalisis always in search of notoriety has announced this week that Maduro recovered personally 11% of its "popularity" without explaining what this meant to their earlier numbers. Someone pointed out that Luis Vicente Leon could not rest his ever present wish to be in the forefront, to "declare just for the sake of declaring".
3- This blogger has not performed the painstaking analysis done in previous years. Then he got it right more often than wrong. This time around I will limit myself to examine the possibilities since there was no time, nor will to do the work for personal reasons. Let's say charitably that I base myself on memories and educated gut feeling district per district, under strict prudent assertions, from older data.
4- And of course this assumes that votes will be indeed counted as they come. But let's not be picky about that now as predicting the extent of actual ballot stuffing cannot be predicted. For simplicity let's assume that the regime will count the ballots.
This being said, as in the previous installment, I have divided the 167 seats to be voted on as "safe" "leaning" and "toss up". Let's just say that "safe" means 85% probability of victory, "leaning" 70% probability of victory and toss up, less than that. Thus a final prediction means an arithmetic calculation out of the 5 groups.
Case 1: 10% difference between MUD and PSUV
A narrow victory for the opposition, due to the gerrymandering of electoral districts and the bonus for the PSUV coming from states which are very dependent on social programs.
Case 2: 15% difference between MUD and PSUV
Things improve a little bit for the opposition but the gerrymandering still plays heavily against the comfortable majority the winner would get in a normally functioning democracy.
Case 3; 20% spread between MUD and PSUV
This is still not good enough. The MUD needs a 3/5 super-majority to be able to resit the pressure and abuse of the regime. and be "veto" proof on some type of legislation. That is, the MUD needs to gain 101 seats.
In this case things look a little bit better as the gerrymandering effect starts fading some. The opposition MUD would be getting at least 100 seats and as much as 105. The super-majority number being 101, it is clear that the opposition getting less than 20% more votes than the PSUV will allow the regime to postpone the debacle.
I am not going to calculate what is the spread the MUD needs to get the 2/3 majority in parliament which would mean the end of the regime but I guess it is at least a 25% vote advantage, a majority that as of now I do not see happening. Too many people are willing to bitch about Maduro but once in front of the voting machine, their vote becomes conservative, conservative having become PSUV. In democracy a conservative vote is always the one given to a party that has been more than ten years in office, a situation that people simply are afraid to change.
My final prediction?
I think I am going to go with case 2 with a few provisions. There may be a couple of independents squeaking in. Some upsets may not happen.
So I am going to go with 96 seats and 16% more votes for MUD than for PSUV. Why not? As crazy as any other prediction to be found around. My optimist outcome is 18% ahead with 101 and my pessimist is 13% with 92.
Friday, 4 December 2015
The campaign that reached new lows (YV-9)
The electoral campaign of 2015 in Venezuela will make it to the text books of electoral infamy. To find worst campaigning conditions you need to look into outright dictatorships of the communist type. These try to pretend that everybody gets along while folks are forced to vote for the one party state. In fascism they do not even bother with appearances which, in a way, is a tad more honest.
But the bolivarian farce came to power through honest elections and it must retain power through elections, no matter how rigged those are. There must be an appearance that there is an electoral contest. That is why opposition public meetings are still authorized, even though shot down as necessary least they become too large.
Recapping all the electoral treachery is too long for this blog. Besides, the OAS General Secretary has done a magnificent job out of it, through an 18 pages letter to the Venezuelan Electoral board, CNE. Let's just say that you can find it all, from gerrymandering, to funding abuse and even false electoral propaganda of political parties using opposition candidates to promote their own ones, going as far as finding perfectly unknown assholes that happen to have the same name as the opposition candidate. In other places the amount of political posters of unknown parties dwarfs the posters of the PSUV or opposition candidates in numbers and size (see below). We all know of course that the regime itself is financing these efforts trying to pry away vote by vote from the opposition electorate. They have no sense of ridicule.
But when all is said and done, that excess of cheating is nothing new, it has been tried everywhere else although not to that extent in Venezuela, and in the end may turn out to be counterproductive. The strongest electoral campaign will always flounder when the voter has no food nor medicine for its kids. Polls in a rare unanimity give the opposition at the very least 15 points ahead of the regime.
Yet, what will make this electoral campaign truly memorable is that it illustrated in the most cruel fashion the vileness that chavismo has descended into. I, for one, am completely bemused that there are people with some democratic inkling that could support a regime campaigning in such extreme ways. There is a simple explanation, chavismo has stopped long ago being a democratic movement, If it ever was one. From political prisoners, to the insults uttered against opposition respectability, reaching actually shootings of opposition rallies, for that you need to go to Myanmar or the like for comparison. With the provision that Myanmar is actually improving while we may still become a gulag civil war country.
The international outrage has been such that you can only find minimum lip service support for the regime in a scarce number of countries. The democratic countries? None supports the regime anymore. In fact, for the first time, there is actually a country ready not to recognize the Venezuelan election if on Sunday it sees worse than what it has been so far. And that country, Argentina, may be what many other countries are waiting for as the excuse to agree that Venezuela's regime is beyond the pale.
So there you have, a campaign for the history books.
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I have not seen such a concentration of posters for any candidate, PSUV or MUD like the ones you see below for the disgraceful William Ojeda. He claims to be a moderate thinking opposition but he is also the PSUV candidate. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find a single PSUV poster anywhere with Ojeda...
 |
| This silly banner says "either you agree or I will not vote". With all colors from alleged opposition parties. That are not, only fake vote robbers. It started appearing 2 days ago, a timing for distress. |
Recapping all the electoral treachery is too long for this blog. Besides, the OAS General Secretary has done a magnificent job out of it, through an 18 pages letter to the Venezuelan Electoral board, CNE. Let's just say that you can find it all, from gerrymandering, to funding abuse and even false electoral propaganda of political parties using opposition candidates to promote their own ones, going as far as finding perfectly unknown assholes that happen to have the same name as the opposition candidate. In other places the amount of political posters of unknown parties dwarfs the posters of the PSUV or opposition candidates in numbers and size (see below). We all know of course that the regime itself is financing these efforts trying to pry away vote by vote from the opposition electorate. They have no sense of ridicule.
But when all is said and done, that excess of cheating is nothing new, it has been tried everywhere else although not to that extent in Venezuela, and in the end may turn out to be counterproductive. The strongest electoral campaign will always flounder when the voter has no food nor medicine for its kids. Polls in a rare unanimity give the opposition at the very least 15 points ahead of the regime.
Yet, what will make this electoral campaign truly memorable is that it illustrated in the most cruel fashion the vileness that chavismo has descended into. I, for one, am completely bemused that there are people with some democratic inkling that could support a regime campaigning in such extreme ways. There is a simple explanation, chavismo has stopped long ago being a democratic movement, If it ever was one. From political prisoners, to the insults uttered against opposition respectability, reaching actually shootings of opposition rallies, for that you need to go to Myanmar or the like for comparison. With the provision that Myanmar is actually improving while we may still become a gulag civil war country.
The international outrage has been such that you can only find minimum lip service support for the regime in a scarce number of countries. The democratic countries? None supports the regime anymore. In fact, for the first time, there is actually a country ready not to recognize the Venezuelan election if on Sunday it sees worse than what it has been so far. And that country, Argentina, may be what many other countries are waiting for as the excuse to agree that Venezuela's regime is beyond the pale.
So there you have, a campaign for the history books.
--------------------------------
I have not seen such a concentration of posters for any candidate, PSUV or MUD like the ones you see below for the disgraceful William Ojeda. He claims to be a moderate thinking opposition but he is also the PSUV candidate. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find a single PSUV poster anywhere with Ojeda...
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Electoral paranoia (YV-8)
The regime is not helping its cause (albeit hopeless, but that is another story).
It refuses any, ANY criticism or mere suggestion. All are mere ploys serving the Empire of the North. That Cuban line is getting, well, tiresome. In recent days the foreign minister, the ineffable Delcy Rodriguez, has issued communiques against whatever she can write against. Her latest is against Spain, the UK and the European Union. While she does that she receives Rodriguez Zapatero (ex Spanish Prime Minister) and Torrijos, (ex Panama President), both of long tradition of deals with Chavez. Of course, those are invited by the Electoral Board CNE, and thus kosher. But we are waiting for the arrival of over half a dozen of ex-head of states of excellent democratic credentials. But those are not kosher and we are waiting with bated breath as to whether the regime will allow them to leave the airport. (1)
Meanwhile Maduro stung by the infamy criticism yesterday on his words against Ocariz, went ahead and repeated his attacks, visibly picked. For good measure he had the Petare chief of police arrested and quartered all of Petare police. This, of course, will not only make crime worse this week end but will allow for easier electoral fraud by the regime who cannot stand to lose once again in the popular sectors of Petare. Note: apparently the regime thinks that Petare opposition police was the cause of the violence against opposition candidate Pizarro. Go figure!
While he was at it this week end Maduro had no qualms in stating that Lorenzo Mendoza, CEO of Polar Group, paid a full stadium crowd to cheer him. That Maduro is unable to go in an open public space without being booed may have had negative effects on his mood.
And more but the reader gets the drift. I will just note that the public murder of an AD local pol in Guarico, a murder that made front pages around the world, was speedily solved by the regime, from acting arm to "intellectual" responsibilities for the crime. This would be nice if it were not for the exquisite power point details shown by the prosecution when hundreds and thousands of simpler cases have not found any resolution in Venezuela. In other words, nobody believes the inquiry results. CSI-Caracas it ain't.
No need to read tea leaves. The regime knows it is in trouble and it is trying last minute desperate measures, not even to regain votes, but to stop the hemorrhage of its supporters.
----------------------------------------
1) You may want to visit the Web page of the Foreign ministry, where you will be allowed to wonder if its purpose is to promote Venezuela overseas or if it is a mere electoral propaganda and insult machinery. Do not miss the page on Chavez alone, deified a la North Korean.
PD: looks like the opposition is finally receiving open support from the LGBT groups... This certainly will feed the regime's paranoia who for some absolutely inexplicable reason had significant gay support.
And then there is also this for the paranoia, a real "el pueblo" showing how to vote for the opposition candidate on her street vending cart.
It refuses any, ANY criticism or mere suggestion. All are mere ploys serving the Empire of the North. That Cuban line is getting, well, tiresome. In recent days the foreign minister, the ineffable Delcy Rodriguez, has issued communiques against whatever she can write against. Her latest is against Spain, the UK and the European Union. While she does that she receives Rodriguez Zapatero (ex Spanish Prime Minister) and Torrijos, (ex Panama President), both of long tradition of deals with Chavez. Of course, those are invited by the Electoral Board CNE, and thus kosher. But we are waiting for the arrival of over half a dozen of ex-head of states of excellent democratic credentials. But those are not kosher and we are waiting with bated breath as to whether the regime will allow them to leave the airport. (1)
Meanwhile Maduro stung by the infamy criticism yesterday on his words against Ocariz, went ahead and repeated his attacks, visibly picked. For good measure he had the Petare chief of police arrested and quartered all of Petare police. This, of course, will not only make crime worse this week end but will allow for easier electoral fraud by the regime who cannot stand to lose once again in the popular sectors of Petare. Note: apparently the regime thinks that Petare opposition police was the cause of the violence against opposition candidate Pizarro. Go figure!
While he was at it this week end Maduro had no qualms in stating that Lorenzo Mendoza, CEO of Polar Group, paid a full stadium crowd to cheer him. That Maduro is unable to go in an open public space without being booed may have had negative effects on his mood.
And more but the reader gets the drift. I will just note that the public murder of an AD local pol in Guarico, a murder that made front pages around the world, was speedily solved by the regime, from acting arm to "intellectual" responsibilities for the crime. This would be nice if it were not for the exquisite power point details shown by the prosecution when hundreds and thousands of simpler cases have not found any resolution in Venezuela. In other words, nobody believes the inquiry results. CSI-Caracas it ain't.
No need to read tea leaves. The regime knows it is in trouble and it is trying last minute desperate measures, not even to regain votes, but to stop the hemorrhage of its supporters.
----------------------------------------
1) You may want to visit the Web page of the Foreign ministry, where you will be allowed to wonder if its purpose is to promote Venezuela overseas or if it is a mere electoral propaganda and insult machinery. Do not miss the page on Chavez alone, deified a la North Korean.
PD: looks like the opposition is finally receiving open support from the LGBT groups... This certainly will feed the regime's paranoia who for some absolutely inexplicable reason had significant gay support.
Hoy en el cierre de campaña de la MUD en ccs y al fin compartí con @edgarmanuel y con @yovr22 pic.twitter.com/hTA0r8JI2L— euclides™ (@carajitopitt) December 3, 2015And then there is also this for the paranoia, a real "el pueblo" showing how to vote for the opposition candidate on her street vending cart.
Ella está clarísima pic.twitter.com/ItpOqqvzBW
— Mari Montes (@porlagoma) November 30, 2015A certifiable "revolution" (election YV-7)
The bolivarian farce is reaching true levels of madness. Not only Maduro is certifiable, but for his supporters to go along with his latest "boutades" is a sign of the general dysfunctionality of a large spectrum of the populace.
Yesterday Maduro scored big on the levels of arbitrary and vile cruelty. Campaigning in a district were the regime is losing bad (Petare) and where the regime is in trouble (Guarenas-Guatire) he resorted to an undeserved arrest and to a humiliating moral abuse.
Campaigning around Guarenas Maduro claimed that he saw a long line at a supermarket. He simply said that this was a conspiracy by management and demanded the manager to be arrested on the spot. He later bragged that the pour soul had indeed been arrested. And to make his threats clearer he ordered an investigation to the local Heinz branch and ordered the managers to be jailed in case there was anything out of normal. In short, Maduro yesterday made it clear that he decided who goes to jail and when. Period.
The second item is worse. Petare's mayor, Carlos Ocariz, happens to have a child sick with leukemia. Since the Venezuelan heath system is a mess (I know it first hand with all the trouble I have finding treatments for my S.O.), amen of the child having probably a difficult form of leukemia, Ocariz has had to travel often to the US to accompany his kid a treatment session at a time. He can do that because I understand his wife family has the means (or got a US insurance). The chavistas at Petare's council also know about that as Ocariz has taken the necessary dispositions to make sure things run when he leaves for a week or two.
That was not enough for Maduro who publicly accused Ocariz of being a parasite, among other things, and of spending his time vacationing in his Miami mansion. Ocariz replied with a very dignified letter that Maduro has not replied to, and even less apologized for his abuse.
The point I want to make is not on the actual facts resumed above. The point is that Maduro is not acting as a Venezuelan. In our political language what Maduro said on Ocariz yesterday is simply not done. It is beyond the pale. Even Chavez would not have stooped so low. This reeks of communist brain washing of the worst kind, the kind that in its extremes joins end with fascism. A kind that is only available in Castro's Cuba. And that is that.
The trouble here is that when a sitting president is reaching such actions (never mind his now frequent promises of not respecting an adverse electoral result) one must fear for election day Sunday and what comes next. Maduro is not a democrat, never was, always acted in consequence. The brain behind him neither is a democrat and I fear she is unable to understand the risks they are taking. After all Cilia Flores has always seen power as a means to get rich, proving his by her more than exaggerated nepotism. Like Maduro and his Cuban masters they think that retaining power is simply acceptable once a few have been shot dead.
Will chavismo follow the crazies that are on board with Maduro? This is another electoral parameter that we cannot assess.
Yesterday Maduro scored big on the levels of arbitrary and vile cruelty. Campaigning in a district were the regime is losing bad (Petare) and where the regime is in trouble (Guarenas-Guatire) he resorted to an undeserved arrest and to a humiliating moral abuse.
Campaigning around Guarenas Maduro claimed that he saw a long line at a supermarket. He simply said that this was a conspiracy by management and demanded the manager to be arrested on the spot. He later bragged that the pour soul had indeed been arrested. And to make his threats clearer he ordered an investigation to the local Heinz branch and ordered the managers to be jailed in case there was anything out of normal. In short, Maduro yesterday made it clear that he decided who goes to jail and when. Period.
The second item is worse. Petare's mayor, Carlos Ocariz, happens to have a child sick with leukemia. Since the Venezuelan heath system is a mess (I know it first hand with all the trouble I have finding treatments for my S.O.), amen of the child having probably a difficult form of leukemia, Ocariz has had to travel often to the US to accompany his kid a treatment session at a time. He can do that because I understand his wife family has the means (or got a US insurance). The chavistas at Petare's council also know about that as Ocariz has taken the necessary dispositions to make sure things run when he leaves for a week or two.
That was not enough for Maduro who publicly accused Ocariz of being a parasite, among other things, and of spending his time vacationing in his Miami mansion. Ocariz replied with a very dignified letter that Maduro has not replied to, and even less apologized for his abuse.
The point I want to make is not on the actual facts resumed above. The point is that Maduro is not acting as a Venezuelan. In our political language what Maduro said on Ocariz yesterday is simply not done. It is beyond the pale. Even Chavez would not have stooped so low. This reeks of communist brain washing of the worst kind, the kind that in its extremes joins end with fascism. A kind that is only available in Castro's Cuba. And that is that.
The trouble here is that when a sitting president is reaching such actions (never mind his now frequent promises of not respecting an adverse electoral result) one must fear for election day Sunday and what comes next. Maduro is not a democrat, never was, always acted in consequence. The brain behind him neither is a democrat and I fear she is unable to understand the risks they are taking. After all Cilia Flores has always seen power as a means to get rich, proving his by her more than exaggerated nepotism. Like Maduro and his Cuban masters they think that retaining power is simply acceptable once a few have been shot dead.
Will chavismo follow the crazies that are on board with Maduro? This is another electoral parameter that we cannot assess.
Monday, 30 November 2015
The day after (election YV-6)
So, coverage of the election by this blog has been light this time around. But that is no excuse to make it complete. One thing is to vote and another what happens Monday 7. Let's see.
There could be still a suspension/coup
The violence in the campaign trail with the numerous attacks on opposition politicians and the murder of at least one activist has to give us pause. The signs are clear, the regime is not going away peacefully. Still, at this late date I am not betting all of my money that elections will be actually held on Sunday. Also, I am not betting all of my money that elections will be held and results accepted. Whatever the regime chooses to do on these aspects, it will be sorry for it.
The opposition victory
This is now a given, though some disaster can still strike. At this point there is no pollster that states that the regime may win the election, even with a one seat majority. The only question here is how large the opposition win will be. On this respect I have kept updating my Excel sheet and came up on a tighter result than the first "prediction" one. I have accepted that the MUD to PSUV spread will be 10% (I resist giving it more no matter what pollsters say). I tweeted the result and the observation is that with a 10% advantage the "safe" and "leaning" MUD seats barely reach half! It will all depend on how the toss up seats go. This is a measure on how biased the electoral system is in favor or chavismo that a 10% advance barely gives the opposition a half dozen seats majority!
Recognizing victory
Let's say for the sake of the argument that the regime indeed accepts that the opposition alliance MUD wins. Will the regime accept full victory? Or will the regime subjects us to hours of delays while backroom negotiations take place so that the opposition recognizes a lower seat count in exchange of having a majority recognized? e.g. give up on a 3/5 majority in exchange of a regime recognition of a simple majority.
The week after
Depending on the shock wave of Sunday 6, it is quite possible that the regime uses what days are left from its 2010 majority to pass further laws to restrict the role of the elected National Assembly. That one may be able to shake that away but there will be a waste of time before the elected assembly can start its real job.
Miscellaneous
And of course there are all sorts of things that can go bump in the dark. For example there could be violence from the out of control "colectivos". There could be riots, hunger riots as surprisingly stores do not get food as soon as the opposition majority is proclaimed, etc, etc.
As for what happens once the opposition victory is acknowledged? Matter for another post.
There could be still a suspension/coup
The violence in the campaign trail with the numerous attacks on opposition politicians and the murder of at least one activist has to give us pause. The signs are clear, the regime is not going away peacefully. Still, at this late date I am not betting all of my money that elections will be actually held on Sunday. Also, I am not betting all of my money that elections will be held and results accepted. Whatever the regime chooses to do on these aspects, it will be sorry for it.
The opposition victory
This is now a given, though some disaster can still strike. At this point there is no pollster that states that the regime may win the election, even with a one seat majority. The only question here is how large the opposition win will be. On this respect I have kept updating my Excel sheet and came up on a tighter result than the first "prediction" one. I have accepted that the MUD to PSUV spread will be 10% (I resist giving it more no matter what pollsters say). I tweeted the result and the observation is that with a 10% advantage the "safe" and "leaning" MUD seats barely reach half! It will all depend on how the toss up seats go. This is a measure on how biased the electoral system is in favor or chavismo that a 10% advance barely gives the opposition a half dozen seats majority!
Recognizing victory
Let's say for the sake of the argument that the regime indeed accepts that the opposition alliance MUD wins. Will the regime accept full victory? Or will the regime subjects us to hours of delays while backroom negotiations take place so that the opposition recognizes a lower seat count in exchange of having a majority recognized? e.g. give up on a 3/5 majority in exchange of a regime recognition of a simple majority.
The week after
Depending on the shock wave of Sunday 6, it is quite possible that the regime uses what days are left from its 2010 majority to pass further laws to restrict the role of the elected National Assembly. That one may be able to shake that away but there will be a waste of time before the elected assembly can start its real job.
Miscellaneous
And of course there are all sorts of things that can go bump in the dark. For example there could be violence from the out of control "colectivos". There could be riots, hunger riots as surprisingly stores do not get food as soon as the opposition majority is proclaimed, etc, etc.
As for what happens once the opposition victory is acknowledged? Matter for another post.
Sunday, 29 November 2015
The Macri effect
One week ago Argentina elected a new president, the first certifiably peronist free in decades. As expected there will be changes in Argentina foreign policy. What was less expected is the speed at which president elect Macri started those changes, more than two weeks before being sworn in. To begin with, of the few people allowed on the election night stand, one was Leopoldo Lopez wife, Lilian Tintori. This made it to the opening news of CNNSpanish...
So what now?
The first thing to note is that Macri means what he said. He repeated it twice on his morning after first press conference. Other countries are taking notice and are not amused, like Uruguay. To which Macri replied stating point blank that human right violations were public and notorious in Venezuela and it was up to other countries to chose interest over ethics. In Venezuela they took a few days to acknowledge the hit, hoping, I suppose, that Dilma or somebody would call Macri to ask him to shut up. When nothing more but very gauche declarations like the one from Uruguay came, the regime finally reacted. National Assembly chair Diosdado Cabello called Macri a fascist (it takes one to know one, I suppose). And president Maduro, not to be left behind, went as far as saying that the Argentinian people were ready to raise against Macri (interesting statement since he just got elected, is not sworn in yet,but then again Maduro was never suspected of being a democrat).
And yet, for of his apparent democratic ethics Macri thinks more about Argentina interests than those of Venezuela. He knows that a battle in Mercosur to evict Venezuela is lost because Brazil and Uruguay are too involved with Venezuela corruption and Venezuela owes them too much money. Macri's target is not only the increasingly abhorrent regime of Venezuela, it is Mercosur itself.
Mercosur is failing since Lula reached power. It has become for Brazil something like its private economic zone and as such things like true economic integration and political developments have been sub-ordained to Brazil's interests. The devastating Argentina crisis 13 years ago, and the very light weight of Uruguay and Paraguay made that possible. In other words, with the fraudulent incorporation of Venezuela Mercosur is going nowhere, and Macri seems to have no patience with that. In fact, Macri is looking towards relations with the Pacific Alliance which would favor Argentina more as its economy is more complementary to the P.A. needs than Brazil's one. If Mercosur fails to tame Venezuela it will be a perfect excuse for Macri to start taking its distances with it.
There is also more than Mercosur in the target, there is also the useless UNASUR, a presidential left self protection club for South America. Note that the the swearing in of Macri is on December 10, just when an eventual election fraud crisis in Venezuela would be at its apex. Apparently Macri has chosen his new foreign minister for her experience even though he did not know here personally. He gave her an agenda where two points were nonnegotiable: his pressure on Venezuela and the end of Argentina's relations with Iran. Clearly UNASUR received a notification that any unjustified support to Venezuela will not be approved by Macri and such a division could well mean also the end of the useless UNASUR.
¡Plop! Café CÑN empieza su cobertura de resultado Argentino con abrazo de @liliantintori y @mauriciomacri en tarima pic.twitter.com/t2NkUB7x0e— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) November 23, 2015So what now?
The first thing to note is that Macri means what he said. He repeated it twice on his morning after first press conference. Other countries are taking notice and are not amused, like Uruguay. To which Macri replied stating point blank that human right violations were public and notorious in Venezuela and it was up to other countries to chose interest over ethics. In Venezuela they took a few days to acknowledge the hit, hoping, I suppose, that Dilma or somebody would call Macri to ask him to shut up. When nothing more but very gauche declarations like the one from Uruguay came, the regime finally reacted. National Assembly chair Diosdado Cabello called Macri a fascist (it takes one to know one, I suppose). And president Maduro, not to be left behind, went as far as saying that the Argentinian people were ready to raise against Macri (interesting statement since he just got elected, is not sworn in yet,but then again Maduro was never suspected of being a democrat).
And yet, for of his apparent democratic ethics Macri thinks more about Argentina interests than those of Venezuela. He knows that a battle in Mercosur to evict Venezuela is lost because Brazil and Uruguay are too involved with Venezuela corruption and Venezuela owes them too much money. Macri's target is not only the increasingly abhorrent regime of Venezuela, it is Mercosur itself.
Mercosur is failing since Lula reached power. It has become for Brazil something like its private economic zone and as such things like true economic integration and political developments have been sub-ordained to Brazil's interests. The devastating Argentina crisis 13 years ago, and the very light weight of Uruguay and Paraguay made that possible. In other words, with the fraudulent incorporation of Venezuela Mercosur is going nowhere, and Macri seems to have no patience with that. In fact, Macri is looking towards relations with the Pacific Alliance which would favor Argentina more as its economy is more complementary to the P.A. needs than Brazil's one. If Mercosur fails to tame Venezuela it will be a perfect excuse for Macri to start taking its distances with it.
There is also more than Mercosur in the target, there is also the useless UNASUR, a presidential left self protection club for South America. Note that the the swearing in of Macri is on December 10, just when an eventual election fraud crisis in Venezuela would be at its apex. Apparently Macri has chosen his new foreign minister for her experience even though he did not know here personally. He gave her an agenda where two points were nonnegotiable: his pressure on Venezuela and the end of Argentina's relations with Iran. Clearly UNASUR received a notification that any unjustified support to Venezuela will not be approved by Macri and such a division could well mean also the end of the useless UNASUR.
Friday, 27 November 2015
La Marseillaise is back
Today there was a very moving tribute to those who died in the Paris attack of November 13. The chosen venue for its austerity and splendor, and security, was the yard at L'Hotel des Invalides, built by the Sun King and that is used without any remorse by La République. At the end of the ceremony the French anthem was powerfully sung by all the political participants from all crosses of the republic, all security forces and, I dare to venture, at least 90% of the victims relatives that attended.
Although not clear for non French national the tribune behind the president, all alone in front, included all relevant figures, from all ex prime ministers, figures from both extremes, high army officers mixed with civilians, and more. All freezing cold together in republican unity behind the figure of the state. You have to give it to the French for Republican restrained but telling pageantry, one that only the US may outdo. Republic is not an empty feeling.
The values of the republic are obvious from those pictures, there is no need for me to discuss except to note that these values are cruelly missing today in Venezuela where such a gathering is today unthinkable.
I have refrained to discuss the terror attacks on Paris two weeks ago because I could not believe I would had to do such twice in a year. And then, the show of national unity moved me, made me proud of my French passport (a feeling I have lost about my Venezuelan passport circa 2009).
These days in Paris there is the palpable feeling that comes from the distinction between patriotism, the love of your countrymen, and nationalism, the hatred of what is foreign. And perhaps nothing shows it more than the revival of the French anthem, La Marsellaise.
I may be wrong about this but from my years in the US I met a lot of foreigners and as it turned out, a lot of Japanese colleagues. I came to think that Japanese and French were, curiously, cultures closer than one would expect a priori. The point is that only Japanese seem as self assured of their cultural origins and "superiority" than the French. This seems so self-evident for us that we do not feel threatened by other cultures. We do not need to travel as some do with a bottle of ketchup or can "diablitos" if you come from Venezuela.
The paradox here is that this self confidence of the French make us have little attachment to some exterior signs of our nationality. If we live overseas, like I do, we are more likely touched by our anthem than those living in France, who may even consider it gauche and pedestrian to wave the flag or sing La Marseillaise in public. The terror attacks of November 13 may have put an end to this.
In the last two weeks there has been a rather extraordinary display of the "bleu, blanc, rouge" to the point that the government asked the population to try to display the French flag everywhere possible. This request would have been inconceivable on November 12, and even less coming from a socialist government. We are told that these days the French army is beating all records for new recruits, and beyond. And now most of us have no qualms singing La Marseillaise in public.
This new found reverence for our anthem may be something that IS/DAESH did not anticipate and may be sorry for it.
It was not easy for La Marseillaise to gain status, no matter how exciting was its music. Napoleon dropped it and we had to wait for the third Republic in 1879 to have it as the national anthem, something that was not amusing for the monarchies controlling the rest of Europe then. In fact La Marseillaise was the revolutionary chant until finally others emerged like the Internationale.
The words of its first stanza sound even bloodier today than what they used to be; "bloody banners" "ferocious soldiers roaring" "slaughtering your children and women" "grab your weapons citizens" "drown your soil with impure blood". And yet, it survived and is even considered to have one of the easiest tunes to sing along, certainly a reason for its popularity.
But the Marseillaise words also remind folks that France has a warrior past that cannot be forgotten just because the country collapsed ignominiously in one single month of 1940, something that the ancestral enemies of France are fond of recalling. Even friends like the US...
What the terror attack has done, unwillingly, is to wake up this warrior past of France, forgotten since 1940 and the unwinnable wars in Vietnam and Algeria. The peacenick side of France has always been fashionable since the 60ies, and today it is questioned seriously. Of course that does not mean we are going to go to Napoleonic warfare again, times have changed fortunately. But I, for one, was disconcerted a little with how easy it was for socialist president to "declare" war on IS and get near unanimous support at home. Not even in the US Bush had it that easy. IS will be punished, it has been agreed on.
If the IS launched its attacks to shame France, to feed its internal divisions, right now it seems to have badly backfired. France is as united as it has been since WW2, with a patriotic fervor that goes without cheap chauvinism and without hatred. France is reawakening and I think the French may be the most surprised at it. The problem here is mostly for the large Muslim community inside France who now will have to join in and accept that they are French in a secular state. Or? We will see, but we can be sure that this play is just starting.
I am leaving you with this video from today about La Marseillase alone. Enjoy and be thrilled. Aux armes citoyens, sing it aloud and feel
Although not clear for non French national the tribune behind the president, all alone in front, included all relevant figures, from all ex prime ministers, figures from both extremes, high army officers mixed with civilians, and more. All freezing cold together in republican unity behind the figure of the state. You have to give it to the French for Republican restrained but telling pageantry, one that only the US may outdo. Republic is not an empty feeling.
 |
| (Mayors are the only officials allowed to wear the tricolor sash) |
The values of the republic are obvious from those pictures, there is no need for me to discuss except to note that these values are cruelly missing today in Venezuela where such a gathering is today unthinkable.
I have refrained to discuss the terror attacks on Paris two weeks ago because I could not believe I would had to do such twice in a year. And then, the show of national unity moved me, made me proud of my French passport (a feeling I have lost about my Venezuelan passport circa 2009).
These days in Paris there is the palpable feeling that comes from the distinction between patriotism, the love of your countrymen, and nationalism, the hatred of what is foreign. And perhaps nothing shows it more than the revival of the French anthem, La Marsellaise.
I may be wrong about this but from my years in the US I met a lot of foreigners and as it turned out, a lot of Japanese colleagues. I came to think that Japanese and French were, curiously, cultures closer than one would expect a priori. The point is that only Japanese seem as self assured of their cultural origins and "superiority" than the French. This seems so self-evident for us that we do not feel threatened by other cultures. We do not need to travel as some do with a bottle of ketchup or can "diablitos" if you come from Venezuela.
The paradox here is that this self confidence of the French make us have little attachment to some exterior signs of our nationality. If we live overseas, like I do, we are more likely touched by our anthem than those living in France, who may even consider it gauche and pedestrian to wave the flag or sing La Marseillaise in public. The terror attacks of November 13 may have put an end to this.
In the last two weeks there has been a rather extraordinary display of the "bleu, blanc, rouge" to the point that the government asked the population to try to display the French flag everywhere possible. This request would have been inconceivable on November 12, and even less coming from a socialist government. We are told that these days the French army is beating all records for new recruits, and beyond. And now most of us have no qualms singing La Marseillaise in public.
This new found reverence for our anthem may be something that IS/DAESH did not anticipate and may be sorry for it.
It was not easy for La Marseillaise to gain status, no matter how exciting was its music. Napoleon dropped it and we had to wait for the third Republic in 1879 to have it as the national anthem, something that was not amusing for the monarchies controlling the rest of Europe then. In fact La Marseillaise was the revolutionary chant until finally others emerged like the Internationale.
The words of its first stanza sound even bloodier today than what they used to be; "bloody banners" "ferocious soldiers roaring" "slaughtering your children and women" "grab your weapons citizens" "drown your soil with impure blood". And yet, it survived and is even considered to have one of the easiest tunes to sing along, certainly a reason for its popularity.
But the Marseillaise words also remind folks that France has a warrior past that cannot be forgotten just because the country collapsed ignominiously in one single month of 1940, something that the ancestral enemies of France are fond of recalling. Even friends like the US...
What the terror attack has done, unwillingly, is to wake up this warrior past of France, forgotten since 1940 and the unwinnable wars in Vietnam and Algeria. The peacenick side of France has always been fashionable since the 60ies, and today it is questioned seriously. Of course that does not mean we are going to go to Napoleonic warfare again, times have changed fortunately. But I, for one, was disconcerted a little with how easy it was for socialist president to "declare" war on IS and get near unanimous support at home. Not even in the US Bush had it that easy. IS will be punished, it has been agreed on.
If the IS launched its attacks to shame France, to feed its internal divisions, right now it seems to have badly backfired. France is as united as it has been since WW2, with a patriotic fervor that goes without cheap chauvinism and without hatred. France is reawakening and I think the French may be the most surprised at it. The problem here is mostly for the large Muslim community inside France who now will have to join in and accept that they are French in a secular state. Or? We will see, but we can be sure that this play is just starting.
I am leaving you with this video from today about La Marseillase alone. Enjoy and be thrilled. Aux armes citoyens, sing it aloud and feel
Friday, 20 November 2015
A casual electoral prediction (election YV-5)
In past elections I have made predictions that often turned out acceptable to excellent (and sometimes not). This time around as announced, I have not made any exhaustive analysis of numbers and trends because, well, I have no time, not that much interest, the election is too emotional, etc... And mostly because I do not know what will happen on December 6, but I know quite well what will start on December 7. If the regime does not cancel the election, still a possibility for a crazed Maduro.
Yet, I should still play a little.
How did I come up with this graph? After looking at the Caucaguita tale telling trend I did my district excel table, tossed around a few numbers based on the 2010 election, got inspiration on results in between, kept in mind that being angry at Maduro does not mean that the chavista voter will cross the line, and never forgot that the regime has enough of a blackmailing machinery to still be able to save the basics. This, of course, allow me to remain skeptic of the very enthusiastic polls in favor of the opposition. I mean, at this point, I do not think that the treachery of the regime will be enough to save its skin but I am willing to bet that the opposition will not reach the 2/3 grail (power to change the constitution).
Thus the above is my pessimistic result where chavismo retains as much clout as possible. But for that it will need to retain all the seats that I termed "Lean PSUV" and, well, all the toss up seats. I doubt that it can manage that and chavismo should be thankful that it keeps 3/4 of the leaning one and half of the toss up, which will be enough for the opposition to win and get close to a 3/5 majority.
Say, statistically:
45 of the safe +19 of the lean MUD, + 14 tossup, + 6 lean PSUV that makes 84 out of 167, that is 1 seat majority. This for me is the very least the MUD will get.
My max? At this point:
49 safe +24 lean MUD + 16 toss up +10 lean PSUV +2 upset of the red ones that makes 101 out of 167. Or 60% of the seats (with more than 60% of the vote, kind of a stretch no matter what polls say). That is, a 3/5 majority by one seat. Sorry, I cannot come up with a better number for you anti chavista crowd at this time. We'll see December 5.
Reminder: I am not sticking out my neck on this prediction as I have not been able to do all the local research I used to do for other elections. It is as serious a work as I can do according to circumstances but it is still incomplete.
Yet, I should still play a little.
How did I come up with this graph? After looking at the Caucaguita tale telling trend I did my district excel table, tossed around a few numbers based on the 2010 election, got inspiration on results in between, kept in mind that being angry at Maduro does not mean that the chavista voter will cross the line, and never forgot that the regime has enough of a blackmailing machinery to still be able to save the basics. This, of course, allow me to remain skeptic of the very enthusiastic polls in favor of the opposition. I mean, at this point, I do not think that the treachery of the regime will be enough to save its skin but I am willing to bet that the opposition will not reach the 2/3 grail (power to change the constitution).
Thus the above is my pessimistic result where chavismo retains as much clout as possible. But for that it will need to retain all the seats that I termed "Lean PSUV" and, well, all the toss up seats. I doubt that it can manage that and chavismo should be thankful that it keeps 3/4 of the leaning one and half of the toss up, which will be enough for the opposition to win and get close to a 3/5 majority.
Say, statistically:
45 of the safe +19 of the lean MUD, + 14 tossup, + 6 lean PSUV that makes 84 out of 167, that is 1 seat majority. This for me is the very least the MUD will get.
My max? At this point:
49 safe +24 lean MUD + 16 toss up +10 lean PSUV +2 upset of the red ones that makes 101 out of 167. Or 60% of the seats (with more than 60% of the vote, kind of a stretch no matter what polls say). That is, a 3/5 majority by one seat. Sorry, I cannot come up with a better number for you anti chavista crowd at this time. We'll see December 5.
Reminder: I am not sticking out my neck on this prediction as I have not been able to do all the local research I used to do for other elections. It is as serious a work as I can do according to circumstances but it is still incomplete.
Monday, 16 November 2015
As Caucaguita goes so will the election go (election YV-4)
Long time readers of this blog will remember that I have picked up Caucaguita as a bell-weather district in all election analysis that I have written along these many years. Sometimes even with regularly updated graphs as years added more data. As I have written a few months ago this time around I have neither the intention, nor the time to analyze in detail this most emotional of elections, amen of the worst treachery factor since 1999. But I did promise a few short posts in the last days to help interested people understand what is going on. So I went to my Caucaguita electoral figures and came up with this simplified version.
To make a long story short, Cuacaguita is a poor downtrodden area of Eastern Caracas in the Petare district. It has been used as an electoral propaganda ground, most notoriously in the Luis Herrera election (1978). But things never improved much since. It should be a district where chavismo should get always 75% of the vote. And yet it does not.
Now there is a lot of data available for the behavior of Caucaguita voter and one observation is that abstention rates are at least 10% higher in "local" elections than in "national" elections. And more variable. But now I can use only "national" elections data, presidential, referenda and legislative in the graph above. And the results can be simplified to that subset of data, and become more telling.
Interestingly the abstention trend line is to decrease. Slowly but surely. This shows that not only the "bring in the vote" machinery has perfected over the years, but even the opposition benefits from it in what is normally hostile territory. Never mind the possibility of a better educated elector, more aware of its role.
The second observation is that the advantage of chavismo is eroding, slowly but equally surely. The graph shows what percentage of the opposition vote would represent of the chavista vote. That is, 60% means that for every 100 chavista voters 60 opposition voters showed up.
I think that the graph above is quite clear in its meaning even though the total chavista votes varies a lot according on what is actually on the ballot. The opposition vote is increasing its share, and it has gone from a 1 to 2 deficit advantage to barely a 4 to 5.
This is bad news for the regime as we cannot see how this one can stop that trend, the more so that the economic situation is near catastrophic. If the opposition were to manage a count of at least 85% of the chavista count in Caucaguita we can predict a general victory for the opposition country wide. Only rural districts can escape the electoral logic of the Cuacaguita urban nature.
I will note that in its latest attempt at gerrymandering Cuacaguita was taken away from Petare, considered lost for chavismo, to supplement the Guarenas-Guatire district now under heavy opposition pressure (Guatire is already lost). However if the opposition equates 85% of chavismo in Caucaguita I am afraid that it all will have been for naught for the regime.
Then again there is also naked electoral fraud, but that is another story. The take home lesson here is that the lower the abstention the better the chances for the opposition. This graph, in this most difficult district, is explicit. In other words, for the assholes that still preach abstention, please, shut up, you are an embarrassment.
To make a long story short, Cuacaguita is a poor downtrodden area of Eastern Caracas in the Petare district. It has been used as an electoral propaganda ground, most notoriously in the Luis Herrera election (1978). But things never improved much since. It should be a district where chavismo should get always 75% of the vote. And yet it does not.
Now there is a lot of data available for the behavior of Caucaguita voter and one observation is that abstention rates are at least 10% higher in "local" elections than in "national" elections. And more variable. But now I can use only "national" elections data, presidential, referenda and legislative in the graph above. And the results can be simplified to that subset of data, and become more telling.
Interestingly the abstention trend line is to decrease. Slowly but surely. This shows that not only the "bring in the vote" machinery has perfected over the years, but even the opposition benefits from it in what is normally hostile territory. Never mind the possibility of a better educated elector, more aware of its role.
The second observation is that the advantage of chavismo is eroding, slowly but equally surely. The graph shows what percentage of the opposition vote would represent of the chavista vote. That is, 60% means that for every 100 chavista voters 60 opposition voters showed up.
I think that the graph above is quite clear in its meaning even though the total chavista votes varies a lot according on what is actually on the ballot. The opposition vote is increasing its share, and it has gone from a 1 to 2 deficit advantage to barely a 4 to 5.
This is bad news for the regime as we cannot see how this one can stop that trend, the more so that the economic situation is near catastrophic. If the opposition were to manage a count of at least 85% of the chavista count in Caucaguita we can predict a general victory for the opposition country wide. Only rural districts can escape the electoral logic of the Cuacaguita urban nature.
I will note that in its latest attempt at gerrymandering Cuacaguita was taken away from Petare, considered lost for chavismo, to supplement the Guarenas-Guatire district now under heavy opposition pressure (Guatire is already lost). However if the opposition equates 85% of chavismo in Caucaguita I am afraid that it all will have been for naught for the regime.
Then again there is also naked electoral fraud, but that is another story. The take home lesson here is that the lower the abstention the better the chances for the opposition. This graph, in this most difficult district, is explicit. In other words, for the assholes that still preach abstention, please, shut up, you are an embarrassment.
Sunday, 15 November 2015
A small gathering at Plaza Altamira
Plaza Francia Caracas 18:15 pic.twitter.com/1Pp7Dr5AOT— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) November 15, 2015It had to be opposition mayors that had a gathering in support of France after the Paris attacks. In addition of the Embassy top brass, the mayors of Chacao and El Hatillo attended (Muchacho and Smolanski). As far as I know no chavista mayor did shit. But they are too busy trying to save their electoral skins and covering up for the first family drug deals.
Incidentally, most head of states or government have sent personal messages of support to France from their tweeter account. On @nicolasmaduro you will find a simple re-tweet of the foreign ministry which is as lame as possible a communique, but dozens and dozens of electoral re-tweets, many or all of them violating campaign rules.
Then again the regime has been a faithful ally of Assad and of the kind of good and bad terrorist. So I should not be surprised.....
Also I am in shock reading that some in Venezuela disqualify support for France as there are as many victims on a single week end crime spree in Caracas. We are really a fucked up society here.
Saturday, 14 November 2015
Paris
This is also my flag, and more so today.
This is the flag that stands for a secular society ruled by law.
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Flowers and letters: no romance for the revolutionary corpse
It is hard to underestimate the weigh of this week's events on an agonizing Maduro's headed regime. Even your prudent blogger is cautiously allowing himself to believe that yes, indeed, the regime's life should be counted in weeks... Or that at the very least a major change is just around the corner.
The week started with the reply sent to Tibisay Lucena by OAS Secretary Luis Almagro. See, Almagro got really upset about the flippancy of Tibisay Lucena, head of the CNE, Venezuela's electoral board. The woman, on orders from the regime that she is only too happy to oblige, is refusing ANY supervision to the crucial electoral process coming on December 6.
As it turns out the international community has been sending lots of hints as to the validity and fairness of the coming election. These hints have not been duly responded. Thus these hints became more and more direct, asking formally the CNE to allow real international observation, not the mere tourist tour on election day by "friendly" countries which in addition are barred from direct comment on elections. Lucena (and so many others in the regime) have become ruder and ruder, going as far as saying that people like Almagro were interfering on sovereign matters (injerencia). In short: butt off.
The latest curt and undiplomatic reply of Tibisay to Luis was just too much for him and he replied in a long 18 pages letter (PDF in Spanish here). He needed that much space because the letter reads like the longest most comprehensive indictment on Tibisay Lucena's work. Nothing was missed, from the cheapest electoral treacheries, to the lack of access by the opposition to TV, through all the material abuses of the regime, without forgetting political prisoners. Almagro even shows his clear understanding of gerrymandering as done in Venezuela. All, ALL is there. Asking for an observation is in fact a courtesy of sorts, to offer a chance for the regime to state its case.
This letter is of utmost importance because he lays at the feet of Lucena all the guilt for any negative consequence that the fraudulent elections may have. Almagro's team (and allies as he cannot have sent such a letter without the acquiescence of a few OAS members) is absolutely clear on that guilt: either Lucena has been promoting that treachery or she has remained silent in front of it. In the end all will be her direct responsibility. In short, the letter is, well, an ultimatum.
But any rational answer that the regime may have considered to Almagro's letter was taking a back seat when we learned today that two close relatives of Cilia Flores, Maduro's wife and probably the real power behind the throne, were arrested in Haiti as 800 kilos deal of cocaine traffic was busted. As the amateurs that these kids were they blurted immediately their status and their diplomatic passport. To no avail of course for the DEA personnel. Within hours all major papers in the world have been carrying the news that Maduro's close step-relatives were busted, and busted bad.
No link needed, just pick up WSJ, NYT, El Pais, Veja, etc... for details. In short, the two kids fell like amateurs trusting what seemed a rather casual contact from Honduras who was in fact a DEA undercover agent. Cilia Flores nepotism has defrayed the chronicles so there is no surprise in seeing these kids with a high sense of entitlement showing their diplomatic passport (though being nobodies), and promptly saying that they were Maduro's family, and then stating that the drug belonged to Diosdado and Tarek El Aissami (Aragua's governor, on the DEA list). These kids are going to chirp as much as asked.
One can only wonder if they were not set up from the start by a rival Venezuelan drug cartel to sink another one.
Now, this is a big problem. The only way for Cilia and Nicolas out of that mess is to condemn the kids and ask for justice to apply firmly. But we all know that this is not going to happen. So, what? We may have all sorts of invective against the US. Even a final break with closing embassies. Perhaps even a formal notification of Venezuela leaving the OAS (remember the letter at the beginning). The regime may even go as far as cancelling the election for "national security reasons since diplomatic passports are not respected".
But nobody outside of Venezuela will follow. Diplomatic immunity is no blanket immunity to begin with. And it applies only in the country where your mission is. Unless the Flores kids were attached to the Venezuelan embassy in Port au Prince there is little Venezuela can do. A crime is a crime and drug traffic is a crime everywhere in the world except in Venezuela, it seems. Though we can be sure that Haiti will stop receiving its allowances (and may have stopped to do so for a while which means they turned to the US where the bucks are).
I really do not see how the regime can wiggle out of this one. Someone will have to pay, if anything for allowing such a mess to happen, for being such a careless operator. The facts are clear. The world has served notice to the regime that its elections are rigged. The world has announced to the regime that its narco state character is not acceptable. The DEA has learned its lesson form the Carvajal fiasco in Aruba and now they are ready to pick up regime narco officials one by one, as soon as they set foot outside of Venezuela. There must be feverish meetings tonight at Miraflores Palace and major military camps.
I do not know what is going to happen, but something is going to. Since the odds of Cilia abandoning her brood are nil (never mind that they implicated Maduro's own son) we must look elsewhere. Since this is an irrational thug system anything crazy can happen. I would dare to suggest that the only way the regime can try to limit damage from this, and maybe even gain some leverage, is by forcing Maduro to resign in the coming days.
Maduro and Cilia are now beyond "damaged goods", even for their Cuban puppet masters. Forcing them to resign would have one immediate effect: suspend legislative elections where the spread is now reaching 20% against the regime in polls. In a presidential system presidential elections come first and the regime can hope that a presidential election may favor an opposition division while the anti Maduro chavista base may decide to come back to the regime once Maduro is out. Legislative elections can be held later. If the regime loses the presidency it will not matter much for chavismo in the Assembly; if it retains the presidency then it will be easier to retain a legislative majority. Or so would the strategy go. It would be easy to play around electoral agenda using primaries, etc, to postpone presidential elections all the way until February/March and legislative ones all the way until May or June.
That is what I would do if I were the regime, try to gain a few months in the hope oil prices go up again, or that opposition leadership is all in jail.
At any rate, tonight I truly feel for the first time that something has been set into motion, for better or for worse.
PS: note that 800 seem to be a magic kabalistic number for chavismo, like in the Antonini cash bag for Kirchner reelection or the 800 kilos of cocaine in Haiti.
The week started with the reply sent to Tibisay Lucena by OAS Secretary Luis Almagro. See, Almagro got really upset about the flippancy of Tibisay Lucena, head of the CNE, Venezuela's electoral board. The woman, on orders from the regime that she is only too happy to oblige, is refusing ANY supervision to the crucial electoral process coming on December 6.
As it turns out the international community has been sending lots of hints as to the validity and fairness of the coming election. These hints have not been duly responded. Thus these hints became more and more direct, asking formally the CNE to allow real international observation, not the mere tourist tour on election day by "friendly" countries which in addition are barred from direct comment on elections. Lucena (and so many others in the regime) have become ruder and ruder, going as far as saying that people like Almagro were interfering on sovereign matters (injerencia). In short: butt off.
The latest curt and undiplomatic reply of Tibisay to Luis was just too much for him and he replied in a long 18 pages letter (PDF in Spanish here). He needed that much space because the letter reads like the longest most comprehensive indictment on Tibisay Lucena's work. Nothing was missed, from the cheapest electoral treacheries, to the lack of access by the opposition to TV, through all the material abuses of the regime, without forgetting political prisoners. Almagro even shows his clear understanding of gerrymandering as done in Venezuela. All, ALL is there. Asking for an observation is in fact a courtesy of sorts, to offer a chance for the regime to state its case.
This letter is of utmost importance because he lays at the feet of Lucena all the guilt for any negative consequence that the fraudulent elections may have. Almagro's team (and allies as he cannot have sent such a letter without the acquiescence of a few OAS members) is absolutely clear on that guilt: either Lucena has been promoting that treachery or she has remained silent in front of it. In the end all will be her direct responsibility. In short, the letter is, well, an ultimatum.
But any rational answer that the regime may have considered to Almagro's letter was taking a back seat when we learned today that two close relatives of Cilia Flores, Maduro's wife and probably the real power behind the throne, were arrested in Haiti as 800 kilos deal of cocaine traffic was busted. As the amateurs that these kids were they blurted immediately their status and their diplomatic passport. To no avail of course for the DEA personnel. Within hours all major papers in the world have been carrying the news that Maduro's close step-relatives were busted, and busted bad.
No link needed, just pick up WSJ, NYT, El Pais, Veja, etc... for details. In short, the two kids fell like amateurs trusting what seemed a rather casual contact from Honduras who was in fact a DEA undercover agent. Cilia Flores nepotism has defrayed the chronicles so there is no surprise in seeing these kids with a high sense of entitlement showing their diplomatic passport (though being nobodies), and promptly saying that they were Maduro's family, and then stating that the drug belonged to Diosdado and Tarek El Aissami (Aragua's governor, on the DEA list). These kids are going to chirp as much as asked.
One can only wonder if they were not set up from the start by a rival Venezuelan drug cartel to sink another one.
Now, this is a big problem. The only way for Cilia and Nicolas out of that mess is to condemn the kids and ask for justice to apply firmly. But we all know that this is not going to happen. So, what? We may have all sorts of invective against the US. Even a final break with closing embassies. Perhaps even a formal notification of Venezuela leaving the OAS (remember the letter at the beginning). The regime may even go as far as cancelling the election for "national security reasons since diplomatic passports are not respected".
But nobody outside of Venezuela will follow. Diplomatic immunity is no blanket immunity to begin with. And it applies only in the country where your mission is. Unless the Flores kids were attached to the Venezuelan embassy in Port au Prince there is little Venezuela can do. A crime is a crime and drug traffic is a crime everywhere in the world except in Venezuela, it seems. Though we can be sure that Haiti will stop receiving its allowances (and may have stopped to do so for a while which means they turned to the US where the bucks are).
I really do not see how the regime can wiggle out of this one. Someone will have to pay, if anything for allowing such a mess to happen, for being such a careless operator. The facts are clear. The world has served notice to the regime that its elections are rigged. The world has announced to the regime that its narco state character is not acceptable. The DEA has learned its lesson form the Carvajal fiasco in Aruba and now they are ready to pick up regime narco officials one by one, as soon as they set foot outside of Venezuela. There must be feverish meetings tonight at Miraflores Palace and major military camps.
I do not know what is going to happen, but something is going to. Since the odds of Cilia abandoning her brood are nil (never mind that they implicated Maduro's own son) we must look elsewhere. Since this is an irrational thug system anything crazy can happen. I would dare to suggest that the only way the regime can try to limit damage from this, and maybe even gain some leverage, is by forcing Maduro to resign in the coming days.
Maduro and Cilia are now beyond "damaged goods", even for their Cuban puppet masters. Forcing them to resign would have one immediate effect: suspend legislative elections where the spread is now reaching 20% against the regime in polls. In a presidential system presidential elections come first and the regime can hope that a presidential election may favor an opposition division while the anti Maduro chavista base may decide to come back to the regime once Maduro is out. Legislative elections can be held later. If the regime loses the presidency it will not matter much for chavismo in the Assembly; if it retains the presidency then it will be easier to retain a legislative majority. Or so would the strategy go. It would be easy to play around electoral agenda using primaries, etc, to postpone presidential elections all the way until February/March and legislative ones all the way until May or June.
That is what I would do if I were the regime, try to gain a few months in the hope oil prices go up again, or that opposition leadership is all in jail.
At any rate, tonight I truly feel for the first time that something has been set into motion, for better or for worse.
PS: note that 800 seem to be a magic kabalistic number for chavismo, like in the Antonini cash bag for Kirchner reelection or the 800 kilos of cocaine in Haiti.
Monday, 9 November 2015
Can the opposition win? (election YV-3)
This is a rhetorical question: even the once neutral to favorable pollsters historically putting chavismo even or ahead are now giving the opposition a two digit lead. And yet things are not that simple.
I am not talking here of the obvious: electoral cheating that has taken this time around a many splendored scope. This December election will be one for the annals of deceit, treachery and plain banditry.
Yet it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where chavismo could get back to trailing the opposition no more than 5% which is enough for them to get a one seat advantage. I have already discussed that a "victory" for the opposition is a 3/5 majority. Nothing less will be good enough to force the country into a fairly negotiated political transition. Actually I am starting to think that a 2/3 parliamentary majority is what the opposition needs to win. Equally for the regime at this point a "victory" is 45% of the vote cast. Anything less will not do as no "revolution" can retain a semblance of credibility with such poor result in vote. Never mind that the military will start having doubts about supporting a plebiscite based regime that cannot even get 40+% of the vote.
This being said, the point of this blog entry is to think about whether the opposition can indeed get a 2 digit leaded, that is 10%+ margin over chavismo. No matter what the polls say it is hard to guess. True, a larger vote count seems now assured, but the margin will be volatile for many reasons.
First, many folks who have voted for Chavez consistently for over a decade will have a hard time to admit that they were wrong even if their heads are now sun baked through food scarcity lines. I, for one, cannot imagine many chavistas hoping happily from chavismo to opposition without an "abstention" election in between. That "abstain first and then vote oppo next" has been the pattern in the slow electoral growth of the opposition. But going from a documented trend to an hypothetical landslide.....
From this first observation you can understand that the second observation will be about the emotional content of the vote. True, the natives are restless but it is my belief that the bulk of chavista "desertion" will be more through abstention than actual switching. This because many of them will decide for real what to do in the very last days of the campaign and no poll can see that. True, such last minute decisions will not affect the outcome but could at the last minute carve out 2, 3 or 4 points of the opposition advantage. For a 3/5 majority these few points are crucial.
But this could backfire badly for chavismo too, my third observation. Chavismo will try its bring in the vote machinery. But if it pushes too hard, if it forces too much of its voters it could create a resentment reaction turning a lot of folks into former voters.
A fourth observation is how many voters the opposition lost to emigration. A million? A million and a half? Another key factor to reach the fabled 3/5.
Etc.
In short as we reach the last stretch of the campaign chavismo is left to rely on Chavez love and the effectiveness of its bring in the vote now that it has very little to pay for it. As for the opposition, deprived of media and campaign money it has to rely on people being upset enough to give it the crucial 3/5.
As you can guess yourself, an election based on emotions is hardy quantifiable in advance. As of today anything is possible, from a small opposition victory to a landslide. But all decided in the very last week.
I am not talking here of the obvious: electoral cheating that has taken this time around a many splendored scope. This December election will be one for the annals of deceit, treachery and plain banditry.
Yet it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where chavismo could get back to trailing the opposition no more than 5% which is enough for them to get a one seat advantage. I have already discussed that a "victory" for the opposition is a 3/5 majority. Nothing less will be good enough to force the country into a fairly negotiated political transition. Actually I am starting to think that a 2/3 parliamentary majority is what the opposition needs to win. Equally for the regime at this point a "victory" is 45% of the vote cast. Anything less will not do as no "revolution" can retain a semblance of credibility with such poor result in vote. Never mind that the military will start having doubts about supporting a plebiscite based regime that cannot even get 40+% of the vote.
This being said, the point of this blog entry is to think about whether the opposition can indeed get a 2 digit leaded, that is 10%+ margin over chavismo. No matter what the polls say it is hard to guess. True, a larger vote count seems now assured, but the margin will be volatile for many reasons.
First, many folks who have voted for Chavez consistently for over a decade will have a hard time to admit that they were wrong even if their heads are now sun baked through food scarcity lines. I, for one, cannot imagine many chavistas hoping happily from chavismo to opposition without an "abstention" election in between. That "abstain first and then vote oppo next" has been the pattern in the slow electoral growth of the opposition. But going from a documented trend to an hypothetical landslide.....
From this first observation you can understand that the second observation will be about the emotional content of the vote. True, the natives are restless but it is my belief that the bulk of chavista "desertion" will be more through abstention than actual switching. This because many of them will decide for real what to do in the very last days of the campaign and no poll can see that. True, such last minute decisions will not affect the outcome but could at the last minute carve out 2, 3 or 4 points of the opposition advantage. For a 3/5 majority these few points are crucial.
But this could backfire badly for chavismo too, my third observation. Chavismo will try its bring in the vote machinery. But if it pushes too hard, if it forces too much of its voters it could create a resentment reaction turning a lot of folks into former voters.
A fourth observation is how many voters the opposition lost to emigration. A million? A million and a half? Another key factor to reach the fabled 3/5.
Etc.
In short as we reach the last stretch of the campaign chavismo is left to rely on Chavez love and the effectiveness of its bring in the vote now that it has very little to pay for it. As for the opposition, deprived of media and campaign money it has to rely on people being upset enough to give it the crucial 3/5.
As you can guess yourself, an election based on emotions is hardy quantifiable in advance. As of today anything is possible, from a small opposition victory to a landslide. But all decided in the very last week.
Sunday, 8 November 2015
Tourism in Venezuela: at your own risk
So I was away for a few days of beach, sand and surf. Not quite.
I have a time share for a yearly week in Margarita which is why there are occasional pics of the area through this blog. Considering that the S.O. does not like the beach and was OK in health, I risked leaving. Next, all the problems I had to endure for a meager 4 days break.
Preparing for the trip:
-. Get your reservation. Since I did not take my usual time slot the resort only confirms my change two weeks ahead. As a consequence since it is difficult to find airline tickets in such short notice, I already lost one day as I could not find flights for the day the week started. Plus, the confirmation coming so late, I had some unavoidable engagement that made me lose two other days. So form the start I had to pay for 7 days while being able to enjoy only 4. I know, I know, little bourgeois disgust, but as you will read they keep piling up.
- Since a lot of taxis will be involved, since you cannot pay them with plastic, since there is no high currency note, then you have to get yourself a big bundle of bank notes of 100, the highest available. The shortest ride will set you back at least 500 VEB so you will need at least 5 banknotes of 100, if you can find them. See, the problem is that there is such a demand for 100 banknote (about 13 USD cents, that is, 0,13, barely a dime) that banks will not provide them that easily. Your best bet is frequent visits to ATM the week before, maxing out your daily withdrawal until you get the wad you need. In my case I estimated 20,000 in cab fair so I had to get 200 banknotes. TWO HUNDRED. An ATM run not from my bank will give me only 6. At my bank ATM I can get 40 (if available). Do the math. And then visualize getting out a wad of bills when you pay your cab and counting patiently dozens of bills......
- Of course, you have to pack very carefully as you do not know whether a missing item can be replaced at your destination. And yet it does not help: in my case my beach tongues broke and I could not find a replacement to my size so I had to get an overpriced pair of Crocs......
The trip:
- Mistakes abound and you cannot correct them easily. My airline screwed up on my ticket and I had to pay an extra 20% at the airport or else. Sure, I can appeal, but that meant I could not board....
- Creatures comfort are scarce. There is no bottled water. So it is a soda or Gatorade for your thirst. I was hungry and I got inside the fast food court aiming at "¡Que Arepa!" which looked clean and appealing. Except that there were out of corn flour so NO Arepa.
- Harassment in miscellaneous ways is present. The worst offender is that in Margarita you have an immigration check point for all. Allegedly to protect the island form the arrival of criminals and drug smugglers. Ask the natives if they feel any safer.....
- You arrive tired and hungry at your hotel. Yet relief is not there. The Caracas office screwed up and you have to wait half an hour until they can finally untangle part of the screw up and give you keys to your room. But since the screw up was big I had also to advance 50 banknotes so I could eat that night until next morning things got settled and I could enjoy my plan as planned (and get back my precious banknotes!!!!!)
The stay:
- So there we are and there is water but the toilet does not flush. So before I unpack I go to the front desk to report and change room. It turns out that there is a shortage of water in Margarita so they dropped the water pressure to save. Since the toilets are of the high pressure type, without reservoir, well, you can only flush in the few hours during the day where pressure is set to normal.
- Flushing my toilet off hours required me to fill up the paper basket with the thread of water from the shower and lug it to the john. 5 stars it wasn't.
- And after the second day the water was cut outright 20 hours a day, so there was not even a water thread.
- Food was actually not bad. Usually I do not get the food plan as I like to go out on occasion, and I eat munchies so as to spend the week dieting and exercising (there is a fridge in the room and I bring a water boiler). Considering the food shortages I decided that this time around I'd better get them to deal with it. But if food was not bad it was showing a total lack of variety. In short, 50% of the offerings were the same all the time and the other 50% alternated one day each.... After 4 days I had already enough of the cafeteria.
- Drinks were included but you'd better have a solid liver. See, over are the days of fancy liquor. Now what you have is basic rum and local made vodka and gin which are, well, at least for me, a fast source of headaches and hangovers. Still, there is also creativity at the bar. Bailey has disappeared in Venezuela as way, way overpriced. So the barman invented a "Margarita Bailey" which is Ponche Crema (kind of bottled eggnog) with a dash of Venezuelan made whisky and coffee liqueur. Well, it sort of worked and became my night cap....
- Of course, with the water crisis you could not have your towels, bed sheets, etc. changed at will. Since the AC was way too cold and too humid you could not dry them properly. Within two days all started to have a weird scent.....
- I went only once out, to make an errand and get a beach thong replacement. So I had to go to a fancy mall (La Vela) where luxury stores exist except that they have a very limited displays and no customers inside anyway. I paid my Crocs three monthly minimum wages (about 40 USD at black market rate, 4700 USD at the official 6,3), But a pair of solid thongs my size, not nice, just solid, would have set me back a monthly minimum wage anyway. If I caved in and bought them is that by experience I know Crocs last more than three times what a pair of solid thongs can last... The question here, of course, is not whether I can truly afford them; the point here is how the poor masses that voted for Chavez and live on minimum wage can afford to put anything between their feet and the dirt.....
Conclusion:
I 'll spare you more details, such as security, blackouts, etc.. I can only tell you that after 24 hours I seriously considered to go back home (the resort was rather empty, by the way). But the Caribbean is there and well....... even if the beaches are eaten up with oil pollution and look more like a Hawaiian volcano beach than a coral sand one........
 |
| Take out the water and it is pretty much like this |
I have a time share for a yearly week in Margarita which is why there are occasional pics of the area through this blog. Considering that the S.O. does not like the beach and was OK in health, I risked leaving. Next, all the problems I had to endure for a meager 4 days break.
Preparing for the trip:
-. Get your reservation. Since I did not take my usual time slot the resort only confirms my change two weeks ahead. As a consequence since it is difficult to find airline tickets in such short notice, I already lost one day as I could not find flights for the day the week started. Plus, the confirmation coming so late, I had some unavoidable engagement that made me lose two other days. So form the start I had to pay for 7 days while being able to enjoy only 4. I know, I know, little bourgeois disgust, but as you will read they keep piling up.
- Since a lot of taxis will be involved, since you cannot pay them with plastic, since there is no high currency note, then you have to get yourself a big bundle of bank notes of 100, the highest available. The shortest ride will set you back at least 500 VEB so you will need at least 5 banknotes of 100, if you can find them. See, the problem is that there is such a demand for 100 banknote (about 13 USD cents, that is, 0,13, barely a dime) that banks will not provide them that easily. Your best bet is frequent visits to ATM the week before, maxing out your daily withdrawal until you get the wad you need. In my case I estimated 20,000 in cab fair so I had to get 200 banknotes. TWO HUNDRED. An ATM run not from my bank will give me only 6. At my bank ATM I can get 40 (if available). Do the math. And then visualize getting out a wad of bills when you pay your cab and counting patiently dozens of bills......
- Of course, you have to pack very carefully as you do not know whether a missing item can be replaced at your destination. And yet it does not help: in my case my beach tongues broke and I could not find a replacement to my size so I had to get an overpriced pair of Crocs......
The trip:
- Mistakes abound and you cannot correct them easily. My airline screwed up on my ticket and I had to pay an extra 20% at the airport or else. Sure, I can appeal, but that meant I could not board....
- Creatures comfort are scarce. There is no bottled water. So it is a soda or Gatorade for your thirst. I was hungry and I got inside the fast food court aiming at "¡Que Arepa!" which looked clean and appealing. Except that there were out of corn flour so NO Arepa.
- Harassment in miscellaneous ways is present. The worst offender is that in Margarita you have an immigration check point for all. Allegedly to protect the island form the arrival of criminals and drug smugglers. Ask the natives if they feel any safer.....
- You arrive tired and hungry at your hotel. Yet relief is not there. The Caracas office screwed up and you have to wait half an hour until they can finally untangle part of the screw up and give you keys to your room. But since the screw up was big I had also to advance 50 banknotes so I could eat that night until next morning things got settled and I could enjoy my plan as planned (and get back my precious banknotes!!!!!)
The stay:
- So there we are and there is water but the toilet does not flush. So before I unpack I go to the front desk to report and change room. It turns out that there is a shortage of water in Margarita so they dropped the water pressure to save. Since the toilets are of the high pressure type, without reservoir, well, you can only flush in the few hours during the day where pressure is set to normal.
- Flushing my toilet off hours required me to fill up the paper basket with the thread of water from the shower and lug it to the john. 5 stars it wasn't.
- And after the second day the water was cut outright 20 hours a day, so there was not even a water thread.
- Food was actually not bad. Usually I do not get the food plan as I like to go out on occasion, and I eat munchies so as to spend the week dieting and exercising (there is a fridge in the room and I bring a water boiler). Considering the food shortages I decided that this time around I'd better get them to deal with it. But if food was not bad it was showing a total lack of variety. In short, 50% of the offerings were the same all the time and the other 50% alternated one day each.... After 4 days I had already enough of the cafeteria.
- Drinks were included but you'd better have a solid liver. See, over are the days of fancy liquor. Now what you have is basic rum and local made vodka and gin which are, well, at least for me, a fast source of headaches and hangovers. Still, there is also creativity at the bar. Bailey has disappeared in Venezuela as way, way overpriced. So the barman invented a "Margarita Bailey" which is Ponche Crema (kind of bottled eggnog) with a dash of Venezuelan made whisky and coffee liqueur. Well, it sort of worked and became my night cap....
- Of course, with the water crisis you could not have your towels, bed sheets, etc. changed at will. Since the AC was way too cold and too humid you could not dry them properly. Within two days all started to have a weird scent.....
- I went only once out, to make an errand and get a beach thong replacement. So I had to go to a fancy mall (La Vela) where luxury stores exist except that they have a very limited displays and no customers inside anyway. I paid my Crocs three monthly minimum wages (about 40 USD at black market rate, 4700 USD at the official 6,3), But a pair of solid thongs my size, not nice, just solid, would have set me back a monthly minimum wage anyway. If I caved in and bought them is that by experience I know Crocs last more than three times what a pair of solid thongs can last... The question here, of course, is not whether I can truly afford them; the point here is how the poor masses that voted for Chavez and live on minimum wage can afford to put anything between their feet and the dirt.....
Conclusion:
I 'll spare you more details, such as security, blackouts, etc.. I can only tell you that after 24 hours I seriously considered to go back home (the resort was rather empty, by the way). But the Caribbean is there and well....... even if the beaches are eaten up with oil pollution and look more like a Hawaiian volcano beach than a coral sand one........
Thursday, 29 October 2015
Does chavismo want an election? (election 2015 YV-2)
Count me in those who still doubt that there will be elections on December 6. I cannot see the regime going through elections unless it is certain that the opposition will not get more than 90 seats (about 55%). With that number it should not be too difficult for the regime to lure away enough opposition representatives to recover a weak majority within a year or two. Considering the complete control over everything else, the regime thinks that this is the worst case scenario they are willing to accept.
Unfortunately all polls indicate that 90 may actually be the opposition floor and that in spite of everything the opposition could reach 100 seats (about 61%). That number still far from the needed 66% majority to change things in the country is still high enough that the National Assembly could exert some controls and launch some damaging investigations. Investigations that of course the regime cannot tolerate, nor dodge. What is worse for the regime is that if the opposition gets 100 or more seats then it is not that unlikely for some chavista to defect to the opposition side if the parliamentary investigations become too spicy. After all Venezuelan politicians are not known for their admirable qualities of sinking with the ship. Their attitude is rather murine.
That increasing desperation inside the regime who justifiably fears for its privileges is sensed more and more. If the sentence on Lopez was a clear salvo, other words are equally telling.
For example the other day nobody less but Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, said that all of the opposition was suspect of plotting against the regime. She did not nuance much, for her there is no one worth discussing on the other side of the isle. Certainly Cilia being one of the worst offenders as far as nepotism is concerned knows for sure that her shenanigans would not be funded anymore under a new management. This is not a matter of fear for her, she is way too amoral for having such feelings, but rather mere technical points to keep her extended brood on tenure. For people like Cilia, the others simply want her job to cash in.
Her husband Nicolas goes further. He is now seeing conspiracy when people discuss among themselves the Venezuelan economic disaster and speculate how big would a rescue package be. Since Maduro is too dumb to understand, and worse, too unwilling to learn how the real world functions, then these people discussing serious matters are mere conspirators. That is why Lorenzo Mendoza is under threat of jail for having a phone call to Ricardo Hausman tapped illegally. I am quite certain that Maduro knows the risks in jailing Mendoza but if this can stop the election he may well be willing to take that risk. Soon attending a mere campaign meeting will be an act of conspiracy.
Of course, there are the constant and multiple insults from the chavista riffraff but I will spare you that. It will be enough with these two examples coming from the very top of the state to figure out what goes on under.
What is more interesting here, when you read the variety and quality of insults, is that it seems that there is a deep divide inside chavismo as to the election. Granted, all agree on maximum abuse against the opposition making this campaign already the worst in chavista history, a campaign that should have already been condemned internationally as it is.
On one side you have people like Maduro who is on record, as president of the nation, saying that the regime has to win the election at any cost, and that if that did not happen well, let's go and hit the streets and refuse recognition. We even have cute and ridiculous scenes where the regime offers a document that all parts should sign to recognize the result when that document was not discussed by anyone. And then of course attack the opposition as warmongers for not signing it.
On the other side you have a relative silence from the army and from some of the regime operators who abound in attacks against the opposition but try not to go overboard with these. It is all a matter of degree in histrionics.
My interpretation is that there are people like Maduro and Flores who are ready to suspend elections that they cannot win. Period. Come what may. On the other side there are chavistas that think not holding elections could be worse than losing them. They certainly cannot be vocal about it inside a regime permeated with spies all around. I would dare to go as far as putting Diosdado Cabello in that group. Why are these people willing to contemplate a loss? The Sandinista experience is a good piece of data. When they left Violeta Chamorro win they burdened the opposition with the management of the crisis they had left behind, and later they helped create a major division inside the opposition that allowed for their return. And now a divided opposition and Chavez cash have consolidated Sandinismo tenure in ways guns could never manage. Note: Sandinistas always kept control of the army.
Also, for chavismo who lacks an Evita, a little bit of opposition epic like Peronism had in Argentina could be of great help long run.
I the end, besides the army, what will decide whether elections are held, how much fraud is applied, what result is accepted, will be the result of the inner battle within chavismo. The battle is between those that want to null elections and those that are willing to take a risk. In the end, what is really at stake here is which group from chavismo will get its hands on the remaining riches, as those may be. The opposition is a mere distraction in that battle.
Unfortunately all polls indicate that 90 may actually be the opposition floor and that in spite of everything the opposition could reach 100 seats (about 61%). That number still far from the needed 66% majority to change things in the country is still high enough that the National Assembly could exert some controls and launch some damaging investigations. Investigations that of course the regime cannot tolerate, nor dodge. What is worse for the regime is that if the opposition gets 100 or more seats then it is not that unlikely for some chavista to defect to the opposition side if the parliamentary investigations become too spicy. After all Venezuelan politicians are not known for their admirable qualities of sinking with the ship. Their attitude is rather murine.
That increasing desperation inside the regime who justifiably fears for its privileges is sensed more and more. If the sentence on Lopez was a clear salvo, other words are equally telling.
For example the other day nobody less but Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, said that all of the opposition was suspect of plotting against the regime. She did not nuance much, for her there is no one worth discussing on the other side of the isle. Certainly Cilia being one of the worst offenders as far as nepotism is concerned knows for sure that her shenanigans would not be funded anymore under a new management. This is not a matter of fear for her, she is way too amoral for having such feelings, but rather mere technical points to keep her extended brood on tenure. For people like Cilia, the others simply want her job to cash in.
Her husband Nicolas goes further. He is now seeing conspiracy when people discuss among themselves the Venezuelan economic disaster and speculate how big would a rescue package be. Since Maduro is too dumb to understand, and worse, too unwilling to learn how the real world functions, then these people discussing serious matters are mere conspirators. That is why Lorenzo Mendoza is under threat of jail for having a phone call to Ricardo Hausman tapped illegally. I am quite certain that Maduro knows the risks in jailing Mendoza but if this can stop the election he may well be willing to take that risk. Soon attending a mere campaign meeting will be an act of conspiracy.
Of course, there are the constant and multiple insults from the chavista riffraff but I will spare you that. It will be enough with these two examples coming from the very top of the state to figure out what goes on under.
What is more interesting here, when you read the variety and quality of insults, is that it seems that there is a deep divide inside chavismo as to the election. Granted, all agree on maximum abuse against the opposition making this campaign already the worst in chavista history, a campaign that should have already been condemned internationally as it is.
On one side you have people like Maduro who is on record, as president of the nation, saying that the regime has to win the election at any cost, and that if that did not happen well, let's go and hit the streets and refuse recognition. We even have cute and ridiculous scenes where the regime offers a document that all parts should sign to recognize the result when that document was not discussed by anyone. And then of course attack the opposition as warmongers for not signing it.
On the other side you have a relative silence from the army and from some of the regime operators who abound in attacks against the opposition but try not to go overboard with these. It is all a matter of degree in histrionics.
My interpretation is that there are people like Maduro and Flores who are ready to suspend elections that they cannot win. Period. Come what may. On the other side there are chavistas that think not holding elections could be worse than losing them. They certainly cannot be vocal about it inside a regime permeated with spies all around. I would dare to go as far as putting Diosdado Cabello in that group. Why are these people willing to contemplate a loss? The Sandinista experience is a good piece of data. When they left Violeta Chamorro win they burdened the opposition with the management of the crisis they had left behind, and later they helped create a major division inside the opposition that allowed for their return. And now a divided opposition and Chavez cash have consolidated Sandinismo tenure in ways guns could never manage. Note: Sandinistas always kept control of the army.
Also, for chavismo who lacks an Evita, a little bit of opposition epic like Peronism had in Argentina could be of great help long run.
I the end, besides the army, what will decide whether elections are held, how much fraud is applied, what result is accepted, will be the result of the inner battle within chavismo. The battle is between those that want to null elections and those that are willing to take a risk. In the end, what is really at stake here is which group from chavismo will get its hands on the remaining riches, as those may be. The opposition is a mere distraction in that battle.
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