The Devil's Excrement

After taking it easy yesterday and relaxing for the first time in quite a while, reading today’s newspapers brought me back to the reality of what is going on in Venezuela. Not a pretty picture.

In the order I read it, here are some highlights of what I read about today that bothered me:

-Venezuelan representatives made a presentation at the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa(SIP) showing a video of Feb. 27^th. The honorary President of SIP said: “It is eloquent what is happening in Venezuela. Chavez is our own Idi Amin, half clown and dangerously cruel. ..It is a farce to say that what we just saw is a country which is part of the OAS Democratic charter”.  Meanwhile, Miguel Henrique Otero said that Chavez had claimed that National guardsmen were injured but the Government has not been able to give one name of a guard that suffered injuries. (El Nacional page A-2 and also in El Universal)

-Luis Garcia Mora in el Nacional: “This is a rip off that the OAS and the Carter Center are backing somehow. A fraud. What did they come for? Don’t they know what is going on within the honorable and transparent Consejo Nacional electoral (CNE)? What are they negotiating? How do you maintain this CNE for the regional and local elections?

-Carlos Melo in an interview in el Nacional (A-4): What morals can the Minister of Information Jesse Chacon speak with? Who have I killed? Nobody. He knows it well. The same way that everyone knows he is a notorious criminal who during the 1992 coup assassinated workers of the Government’s TV channel VTV…The problem is not whether the El rodeo jail is good or bad or is adequate or not for a political prisoner. All Venezuelan jails are hell.

-Jose Manuel Vivancos of Human Rights watch, organization which I was highly critical of in 2002 for its defense of Hugo Chavez (El Nacional A-15): ‘there is unquestionable evidence of human rights violations…there are acts of vandalism by the opposition like the destruction of public property to build barricades. ..There are testimonies and unquestionable evidence of tortures, bad treatment, abuses, hitting people. There are 9 deaths that can be attributed directly to agents of the government. there have been tortures with electricity, burning people, cruel and inhuman treatment of those detained….the problem is the Attorney General’s office opens investigations and never reaches a conclusion, with this you crown impunity…Venezuela’s attempt to recuse the Secretary general of the Human rights Commission of the OAS, ahs no legal bases and reflects a profound ignorance…with it the Venezuelan Government loses and isolates itself as a pariah.

-PDVSA has problems closing its books for 2003 (El Nacional A-20). The company will not be able to file on time and its executives may have lid in last year’s financials, they could be subject to prosecution under the Oxley Act.

-Former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN Milos Alcalay: “the Government is each day more authoritarian…If the Government had recognized the excesses made and explained why the pro-Government demonstrators had the support of the National Guard to demonstrate in front of the Hotel, then this would have not transcended. The Secretary of state without reading my file said they would open an administrative process against me, similarly he said they would deny me my pension, my only recourse is the law, but given the institutional crisis …there are serious concerns over the future of justice in Venezuela…

-Offensive against the OAS: Minister of Infrastructure Diosdado Cabello:” It would appear as is if the only objective of the international observers is the recall referendum”. Hector Navarro, Minister of Higher Education: “The OAS is one more Ministry of the US.”

After taking it easy yesterday and relaxing for the first time in quite a while, reading today’s newspapers brought me back to the reality of what is going on in Venezuela. Not a pretty picture.

In the order I read it, here are some highlights of what I read about today that bothered me:

-Venezuelan representatives made a presentation at the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa(SIP) showing a video of Feb. 27^th. The honorary President of SIP said: “It is eloquent what is happening in Venezuela. Chavez is our own Idi Amin, half clown and dangerously cruel. ..It is a farce to say that what we just saw is a country which is part of the OAS Democratic charter”.  Meanwhile, Miguel Henrique Otero said that Chavez had claimed that National guardsmen were injured but the Government has not been able to give one name of a guard that suffered injuries. (El Nacional page A-2 and also in El Universal)

-Luis Garcia Mora in el Nacional: “This is a rip off that the OAS and the Carter Center are backing somehow. A fraud. What did they come for? Don’t they know what is going on within the honorable and transparent Consejo Nacional electoral (CNE)? What are they negotiating? How do you maintain this CNE for the regional and local elections?

-Carlos Melo in an interview in el Nacional (A-4): What morals can the Minister of Information Jesse Chacon speak with? Who have I killed? Nobody. He knows it well. The same way that everyone knows he is a notorious criminal who during the 1992 coup assassinated workers of the Government’s TV channel VTV…The problem is not whether the El rodeo jail is good or bad or is adequate or not for a political prisoner. All Venezuelan jails are hell.

-Jose Manuel Vivancos of Human Rights watch, organization which I was highly critical of in 2002 for its defense of Hugo Chavez (El Nacional A-15): ‘there is unquestionable evidence of human rights violations…there are acts of vandalism by the opposition like the destruction of public property to build barricades. ..There are testimonies and unquestionable evidence of tortures, bad treatment, abuses, hitting people. There are 9 deaths that can be attributed directly to agents of the government. there have been tortures with electricity, burning people, cruel and inhuman treatment of those detained….the problem is the Attorney General’s office opens investigations and never reaches a conclusion, with this you crown impunity…Venezuela’s attempt to recuse the Secretary general of the Human rights Commission of the OAS, ahs no legal bases and reflects a profound ignorance…with it the Venezuelan Government loses and isolates itself as a pariah.

-PDVSA has problems closing its books for 2003 (El Nacional A-20). The company will not be able to file on time and its executives may have lid in last year’s financials, they could be subject to prosecution under the Oxley Act.

-Former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN Milos Alcalay: “the Government is each day more authoritarian…If the Government had recognized the excesses made and explained why the pro-Government demonstrators had the support of the National Guard to demonstrate in front of the Hotel, then this would have not transcended. The Secretary of state without reading my file said they would open an administrative process against me, similarly he said they would deny me my pension, my only recourse is the law, but given the institutional crisis …there are serious concerns over the future of justice in Venezuela…

-Offensive against the OAS: Minister of Infrastructure Diosdado Cabello:” It would appear as is if the only objective of the international observers is the recall referendum”. Hector Navarro, Minister of Higher Education: “The OAS is one more Ministry of the US.”

Don’t forget to check out FT’s magnum opus compilation of the 100 lies of the Chavez Government. Read them, memorize them repeat them…

The thirteenth victim of the repression of the Government was named Juan Carlos Zambrano who died on Wednesday as a result of the injuries the military inflicted on him by members of the Army camp in La Turiaca, in the Lagunillas municipality in Zulia State.

His concubine Yeicy Vasquez was raped and abused by the soldiers and was threatened with death if she denounced what had happened to her.

Zambrano’s mother said her son worked picking up aluminum cans from the streets to sell them, not exactly what Chávez would call an oligarch. She said she was at the army camp while her son was being tortured. They would hit him and throw him on the floor, while they all stepped on him. They would give him water and then hit him with a bat on the stomach. They tied his hands and dragged him on the asphalt. She said she asked them to stop and they laughed at her. The military claims they detained him because he stole a motor from an oil well.

He was freed and died later in the Hospital. General Carlos Briceno of the 11t Brigade has confirmed that Zambrano was a prisoner, but the information he had was that Zambrano had signed a document in which he said that he was treated well while in captivity.

Zambrano’s mother said that her other son Michel was also detained that day and is missing. Michel went out that day looking for his brother.

Besides Michel Zambrano, there are still seven people desaparecidos from the protests whose names are: Omar Arturo Morales (28); Juan José Pérez (27); Juan Ernesto Sánchez (37); Andrés Bastidas Guedes (32) ; José Luis Rodríguez (33); Eduardo José Miranda (30) y Julio César Gómez (34). They are believed to be dead since they were detained simultaneusly. The Investigative police has begun looking into the case and is the only Government body that has said anything about them according to page B-23 of today’s El Nacional (by subscription).

The thirteenth victim of the repression of the Government was named Juan Carlos Zambrano who died on Wednesday as a result of the injuries the military inflicted on him by members of the Army camp in La Turiaca, in the Lagunillas municipality in Zulia State.

His concubine Yeicy Vasquez was raped and abused by the soldiers and was threatened with death if she denounced what had happened to her.

Zambrano’s mother said her son worked picking up aluminum cans from the streets to sell them, not exactly what Chávez would call an oligarch. She said she was at the army camp while her son was being tortured. They would hit him and throw him on the floor, while they all stepped on him. They would give him water and then hit him with a bat on the stomach. They tied his hands and dragged him on the asphalt. She said she asked them to stop and they laughed at her. The military claims they detained him because he stole a motor from an oil well.

He was freed and died later in the Hospital. General Carlos Briceno of the 11t Brigade has confirmed that Zambrano was a prisoner, but the information he had was that Zambrano had signed a document in which he said that he was treated well while in captivity.

Zambrano’s mother said that her other son Michel was also detained that day and is missing. Michel went out that day looking for his brother.

Besides Michel Zambrano, there are still seven people desaparecidos from the protests whose names are: Omar Arturo Morales (28); Juan José Pérez (27); Juan Ernesto Sánchez (37); Andrés Bastidas Guedes (32) ; José Luis Rodríguez (33); Eduardo José Miranda (30) y Julio César Gómez (34). They are believed to be dead since they were detained simultaneusly. The Investigative police has begun looking into the case and is the only Government body that has said anything about them according to page B-23 of today’s El Nacional (by subscription).

The opposition met with the Consejo Nacional Electoral and asked for the electoral Board to clarify a number of inconsistencies in the data, before accepting whether to go or not to the process of having citizens confirm or not that they signed to request for the President’s recall. The following are some of the criticisms of the data. The opposition challenged the validity of the CNE database, including the following inconsistencies:

i) The regulations established a total of five (5) criteria for invalidating a signature; the CNE used thirty eight (38) different criteria.

ii) The CNE President said when announcing the results of the analysis of the data that they had accepted 3.086.013 signatures as being in the forms, the CNE database contains 3.475.200 signatures the opposition handed in.

iii) The CNE President said 1.832.493 signatures had been declared valid, the database says only 1.783.523 have been accepted.

iv) There are 224 thousand signatures that the CNE rejected due to errors in the cover sheets that the opposition has as accepted by the CNE and stamped by the CNE.

v) There are 28 thousand signatures rejected because they do not appear in the cover sheets, the opposition claims they are there.

vi) There are 23 thousand signatures “lost” by the CNE which now the CNE has “found” and is processing.

vii) There are 276 thousand signatures that have inconsistencies with the Electoral registry and most of them have no problem and are correct.

viii) Of the controversial forms with the same calligraphy, the opposition “discovered” that 54% of them do not have the same calligraphy.

Now, what this implies is the following:

Carrasquero said 1.83 million had been accepted and 876 thousand were planas. The opposition claims 54% of the latter were not planas AT ALL. Add those 473 thousand and the opposition has 2.303 million and it needs 2.432 million, a difference of only 129 thousand signatures which could easily be obtained in the confirmation process. .

Additionally, if you add to that totals 1.83 million+473 thousand (viii) + 276 thousand (vii) + 23 thousand (vi) + 28 thousand (v) + 224 thousand (iv), you get 2.854 million signatures, more than 400 thousand than required.

Now what?

The opposition met with the Consejo Nacional Electoral and asked for the electoral Board to clarify a number of inconsistencies in the data, before accepting whether to go or not to the process of having citizens confirm or not that they signed to request for the President’s recall. The following are some of the criticisms of the data. The opposition challenged the validity of the CNE database, including the following inconsistencies:

i) The regulations established a total of five (5) criteria for invalidating a signature; the CNE used thirty eight (38) different criteria.

ii) The CNE President said when announcing the results of the analysis of the data that they had accepted 3.086.013 signatures as being in the forms, the CNE database contains 3.475.200 signatures the opposition handed in.

iii) The CNE President said 1.832.493 signatures had been declared valid, the database says only 1.783.523 have been accepted.

iv) There are 224 thousand signatures that the CNE rejected due to errors in the cover sheets that the opposition has as accepted by the CNE and stamped by the CNE.

v) There are 28 thousand signatures rejected because they do not appear in the cover sheets, the opposition claims they are there.

vi) There are 23 thousand signatures “lost” by the CNE which now the CNE has “found” and is processing.

vii) There are 276 thousand signatures that have inconsistencies with the Electoral registry and most of them have no problem and are correct.

viii) Of the controversial forms with the same calligraphy, the opposition “discovered” that 54% of them do not have the same calligraphy.

Now, what this implies is the following:

Carrasquero said 1.83 million had been accepted and 876 thousand were planas. The opposition claims 54% of the latter were not planas AT ALL. Add those 473 thousand and the opposition has 2.303 million and it needs 2.432 million, a difference of only 129 thousand signatures which could easily be obtained in the confirmation process. .

Additionally, if you add to that totals 1.83 million+473 thousand (viii) + 276 thousand (vii) + 23 thousand (vi) + 28 thousand (v) + 224 thousand (iv), you get 2.854 million signatures, more than 400 thousand than required.

Now what?