The Devil's Excrement

The Venezuelan Vice-President presented an accusation to the Attorney General’s office against Sumate, the organization that gathered and prepared the signatures for the recall referendum. A legal analysis of the accusation shows that the charges are so ridiculous as to being ludicrous. Sumate is a civil association and thus can not be considered to be a political party as the Vice-President assumes in his accusation. He says Sumate “usurped” function of the Electoral Board by revising the signatures and purging them. Well, what are the people supposed to do? Spontaneously gather the signatures and hand them in? The accusation also says that Sumate collected money for its efforts in coordinating, collecting and handing the signatures “without receiving aid from the Electoral Council”. Well, the Vice-President should know that the Electoral Law simply bans the Council from giving funds to civil associations like Sumate. Thus, the charges against Sumate are ludicrous and represent another smokescreen by the Chávez administration.

The Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel is so cynical that today he went to visit the Electoral Board and spoke about not interfering with the electoral power. His most cynical statement was: “People are saying that the Government will do anything in its power to stop the recall referendum. Nothing is furthest from the truth. We may have opinions that is all”. Yeah!Yeah!Yeah!

Rangel also complained that he did not think it was proper that the US Ambassador visited the Electoral Commission to offer technical help. Of course, this is in preparation for blocking the possibility of foreign observers being present during the recall referendum.

The Venezuelan Vice-President presented an accusation to the Attorney General’s office against Sumate, the organization that gathered and prepared the signatures for the recall referendum. A legal analysis of the accusation shows that the charges are so ridiculous as to being ludicrous. Sumate is a civil association and thus can not be considered to be a political party as the Vice-President assumes in his accusation. He says Sumate “usurped” function of the Electoral Board by revising the signatures and purging them. Well, what are the people supposed to do? Spontaneously gather the signatures and hand them in? The accusation also says that Sumate collected money for its efforts in coordinating, collecting and handing the signatures “without receiving aid from the Electoral Council”. Well, the Vice-President should know that the Electoral Law simply bans the Council from giving funds to civil associations like Sumate. Thus, the charges against Sumate are ludicrous and represent another smokescreen by the Chávez administration.

The Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel is so cynical that today he went to visit the Electoral Board and spoke about not interfering with the electoral power. His most cynical statement was: “People are saying that the Government will do anything in its power to stop the recall referendum. Nothing is furthest from the truth. We may have opinions that is all”. Yeah!Yeah!Yeah!

Rangel also complained that he did not think it was proper that the US Ambassador visited the Electoral Commission to offer technical help. Of course, this is in preparation for blocking the possibility of foreign observers being present during the recall referendum.

United Press International distributed this article on Venezuela’s links to terrorists. I don’t know what type of due diligence UPI does before putting out something like this, but the charges are certainly quite serious.

Russel also sent this article in which US policy analysts respond to Chavez’ charges at the Conference on desertification in Cuba. While I have talked about Chavez’ terrible economic policies, our President had the audacity to criticize the handling of the enviroment by industrialized nations. While I will not get into that topic, Chavez’ enviromental policies have been from negligent to non-existent. His current Minister of the Enviroment is simply ignorant and is alowing PDVSA to contaminate both air and water in the name of the glorious “revolution”.